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A relation is thus a heading paired with a body, the heading of the relation being also the heading of each tuple in its body. The number of attributes constituting a heading is called the degree, which term also applies to tuples and relations. The term n-tuple refers to a tuple of degree n (n ≥ 0). E. F. Codd used the term "relation" in its ...
However, unlike rows and columns in a table, a relation's attributes and tuples are unordered. A relation consists of a heading and a body. The heading defines a set of attributes, each with a name and data type (sometimes called a domain). The number of attributes in this set is the relation's degree or arity. The body is a set of tuples.
Constraints can apply to single attributes, to a tuple (restricting combinations of attributes) or to an entire relation. Since every attribute has an associated domain, there are constraints (domain constraints). The two principal rules for the relational model are known as entity integrity and referential integrity.
The relational algebra uses set union, set difference, and Cartesian product from set theory, and adds additional constraints to these operators to create new ones.. For set union and set difference, the two relations involved must be union-compatible—that is, the two relations must have the same set of attributes.
The consequence is that each value in the tuple must be of some basic type, like a string or an integer. For the elementary type to be atomic it cannot be broken into more pieces. Alas, the domain is an elementary type, and attribute domain the domain a given attribute belongs to an abstraction belonging to or characteristic of an entity.
Overview of a data-modeling context: Data model is based on Data, Data relationship, Data semantic and Data constraint. A data model provides the details of information to be stored, and is of primary use when the final product is the generation of computer software code for an application or the preparation of a functional specification to aid a computer software make-or-buy decision.
Normalization (to first normal form) is a process where attributes with non-simple domains are extracted to separate stand-alone relations. The extracted relations are amended with foreign keys referring to the primary key of the relation which contained it. The process can be applied recursively to non-simple domains nested in multiple levels. [4]
These related things are often called attributes, although they may be independent things. Each attribute can be a class or an individual. The kind of object and the kind of attribute determine the kind of relation between them. A relation between an object and an attribute express a fact that is specific to the object to which it is related.