Chapter 2. The Relational Model

Many good books about database design are available; this book isn’t one of them. Nevertheless, to become a good SQL programmer, you’ll need to become familiar with the relational model (Figure 2.1), a data model so appealingly simple and well suited for organizing and managing data that it squashed the competing network and hierarchical models with a satisfying Darwinian crunch.

You can read E.F. Codd’s A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks (Communications of the ACM, Vol. 13, No. 6, June 1970, pp. 377–387) at www.seas.upenn.edu/~zives/03f/cis550/codd.pdf. Relational databases are based on the data model that this paper defines.

Figure 2.1. You can read E.F. Codd’s A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks (Communications of the ACM, Vol. 13, No. 6, June 1970, pp. 377–387) at www.seas.upenn.edu/~zives/03f/cis550/codd.pdf. Relational databases are based ...

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