What Are the Benefits of Relational Databases? For instance, a salesperson could use SQL to find out how many clients they have acquired in the past month. Using SQL, people who need to analyze data – such as marketers or salespeople – can gather information about the data stored in their database. SQL is not only useful for database developers. It makes it easy to join tables with just a few lines of code. While the technology itself is old, almost every database runs on SQL. This is a standard language that allows you to interact with databases. Relational databases can be queried using the Structured Query Language, or SQL. Foreign keys are stored in another table and are used to reference data from a specific table. Primary keys are stored in the primary place a piece of data is stored. Each User value in our “Post” table has a foreign key. In our example above, each record in our “User” table has a primary key. When you want to create a link between two tables, you can reference that key in another table. The keys that are associated with a record are called primary keys. We’ve illustrated this in the diagram above.Įvery row in a table is assigned a key, which is a unique identifier used to track that particular record. This is made possible in relational databases. You may want to link these two tables together so every post on your blog is associated with the account of the user who created the blog post. You want your database to store two tables: the users who can sign in to your blog and a list of posts for your blog. Suppose you are creating a database for a blog. This allows you to create connections between similar data points in the database. In a relational database, tables can be linked – related – to each other. Tables store the structure of a particular type of data. Rows, or “records”, are individual entries in the database, and tables. It allows you to access data in relation to other pieces of data in the database.ĭata in relational databases is stored using rows and columns. What is a Relational Database?Ī relational database is a special type of database. This record stores data about the blog post with the title “What is a Relational Database?”. The average bootcamp grad spent less than six months in career transition, from starting a bootcamp to finding their first job. The id column stores an integer which we can use to uniquely identify each post. The title, text and meta columns store strings. In this table, our database contains four columns. Each value in a record should correspond with the columns in the table. Within each table you can store records which are individual entries in your database. Each table has a set of columns which define what data can be stored in a database. Tables are like the blueprint for storing a particular type of data. In a database, data is stored using tables. What is a Database?ĭatabases allow you to store data on a computer. Those are all good questions and in this guide, we’re going to break down the basics of relational databases and how they work. Hospitals use databases to track the treatments they administer accountancy firms use databases to keep track of accounting records and web applications use databases to keep a list of their users and content for their platform.īut what about relational databases? How do they work? What’s the difference between a database and a relational database? Databases are a set of data that is stored on a computer. You’ve probably come across the term database at some point in your life.