What an RDBMS Is and Why Tables Matter
Learn what a relational database management system is, how it differs from a spreadsheet or file, and why structured tables are the foundation of every business application.
What Is a Database?
A database is an organised collection of data that you can read, write and query reliably from many programs at once.
- Data is stored on disk, survives restarts
- Many users can read and write concurrently
- You query it with a language — for relational databases, that language is SQL
What Is a Relational Database (RDBMS)?
A relational database stores data in tables made of rows and columns.
- Each table represents one kind of thing:
users,orders,products - Each row is one record
- Each column is one attribute with a fixed type
Common RDBMSs: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, SQL Server, Oracle.
All lessons in this course
- What an RDBMS Is and Why Tables Matter
- Primary Keys and Uniqueness
- NULL: The Third Truth Value
- Data Types Overview: INT VARCHAR DATE BOOLEAN