Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional writes and storage space to maintain the index data structure. Indexes are used to quickly locate data without having to search every row in a database table every time said table is accessed.
A relational DBM uses related data fields (columns) to correlate information between tables. [5] For example, two tables, transaction_user and transaction_amount, would both contain the column "key", and keys between tables would match, making it easy to find both the user and the amount of a specific transaction if the key is known.
Tables can be set to inherit their characteristics from a parent table. Data in child tables will appear to exist in the parent tables, unless data is selected from the parent table using the ONLY keyword, i.e. SELECT * FROM ONLY parent_table;. Adding a column in the parent table will cause that column to appear in the child table.
A table (called the referencing table) can refer to a column (or a group of columns) in another table (the referenced table) by using a foreign key. The referenced column(s) in the referenced table must be under a unique constraint, such as a primary key. Also, self-references are possible (not fully implemented in MS SQL Server though [5]).
In a SQL database query, a correlated subquery (also known as a synchronized subquery) is a subquery (a query nested inside another query) that uses values from the outer query. This can have major impact on performance because the correlated subquery might get recomputed every time for each row of the outer query is processed.
UNION can be useful in data warehouse applications where tables are not perfectly normalized. [2] A simple example would be a database having tables sales2005 and sales2006 that have identical structures but are separated because of performance considerations. A UNION query could combine results from both tables.
A foreign key is a set of attributes in a table that refers to the primary key of another table, linking these two tables. In the context of relational databases, a foreign key is subject to an inclusion dependency constraint that the tuples consisting of the foreign key attributes in one relation, R, must also exist in some other (not necessarily distinct) relation, S; furthermore that those ...
Denormalization is a strategy used on a previously-normalized database to increase performance. In computing, denormalization is the process of trying to improve the read performance of a database, at the expense of losing some write performance, by adding redundant copies of data or by grouping data.