SQL and Relational Theory, 3rd Edition

Contents

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the Third Edition

Chapter 1     Setting the Scene

The relational model is much misunderstood

Some remarks on terminology

Principles not products

A review of the original model

Model vs. implementation

Properties of relations

Base vs. derived relations

Relations vs. relvars

Values vs. variables

Concluding remarks

Exercises

Answers

Chapter 2     Types and Domains

Types and relations

Equality comparisons

Data value atomicity

What’s a type?

Scalar vs. nonscalar types

Scalar types in SQL

Type checking and coercion in SQL

Collations in SQL

Row and table types in SQL

Concluding remarks

Exercises

Answers

Chapter 3     Tuples and Relations, Rows and Tables

What’s a tuple?

Rows in SQL

What’s a relation?

Relations and their bodies

Relations are n-dimensional

Relational comparisons

TABLE_DUM and TABLE_DEE

Tables in SQL

Column naming in SQL

Concluding remarks

Exercises

Answers

Chapter 4     No Duplicates, No Nulls

What’s wrong with duplicates?

Duplicates: further issues

Avoiding duplicates in SQL

What’s wrong with nulls?

Avoiding nulls in SQL

A remark on outer join

Concluding remarks

Exercises

Answers

Chapter 5     Base Relvars, Base Tables

Updating is set level

Relational assignment

More on candidate keys

More on foreign keys

Relvars and predicates

Relations vs. types

Exercises

Answers

Chapter 6     SQL and Relational Algebra I: The Original Operators

Some preliminaries

More on closure

Restriction

Projection

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