Sams Teach Yourself CGI in 24 Hours, Second Edition

The Relational Database Model

Today, the dominant paradigm in the world of databases is the relational model. The fundamental attribute of the relational model is that data is stored within tables. Each table consists of rows and columns; each row represents a single record, and the columns contain the data that make up each record. The intersection of a row and column is referred to as a field. Each field contains a single value.

Table 18.1 contains an example of what a table about movies might look like. As you can see, each column contains a particular type of data, and each row makes up a single record.

Table 18.1. A Sample Table

ID	Title	Studio	Budget
1	Mineral House	Giant	20
2	Prince Kong	MPM	3.25
3	The Code Warrior	MPM	10.3
4	Bill Durham ...