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The database schema is the structure of a database described in a formal language supported typically by a relational database management system (RDBMS). The term " schema " refers to the organization of data as a blueprint of how the database is constructed (divided into database tables in the case of relational databases ).
[5] [6] A relational database definition (database schema, sometimes referred to as a relational schema) can thus be thought of as a collection of named relation schemas. [7] [8] In implementations, the domain of each attribute is effectively a data type [9] and a named relation schema is effectively a relation variable (relvar for short).
Attributes are commonly represented as columns, tuples as rows, and relations as tables. A table is specified as a list of column definitions, each of which specifies a unique column name and the type of the values that are permitted for that column. An attribute value is the entry in a specific column and row.
A primary key uniquely specifies a tuple within a table. While natural attributes (attributes used to describe the data being entered) are sometimes good primary keys, surrogate keys are often used instead. A surrogate key is an artificial attribute assigned to an object which uniquely identifies it (for instance, in a table of information ...
The term "schema" refers to the organization of data as a blueprint of how the database is constructed (divided into database tables in the case of relational databases). The formal definition of a database schema is a set of formulas (sentences) called integrity constraints imposed on a database.
A database relation (e.g. a database table) is said to meet third normal form standards if all the attributes (e.g. database columns) are functionally dependent on solely a key, except the case of functional dependency whose right hand side is a prime attribute (an attribute which is strictly included into some key).
A database model is a type of data model that determines the logical structure of a database. It fundamentally determines in which manner data can be stored, organized and manipulated. The most popular example of a database model is the relational model , which uses a table-based format.
The columns in a candidate key are called prime attributes, [3] and a column that does not occur in any candidate key is called a non-prime attribute. Every relation without NULL values will have at least one candidate key: Since there cannot be duplicate rows, the set of all columns is a superkey, and if that isn't minimal, some subset of that ...