What is a Relational Database for Beginners

So, let us take a look real quick at a relational database, as other people refer to it as a SQL database.

Over here we have two examples of tables. So, this is how we would store information in a relational database.

So, over here I have a student table. And this student table might store individual students. So, you will see over here we have an id, a name and a major.

So, for every single one of my students, I have an entry just like this. And you will notice over here, I am giving each of these entries and ID. And that ID will uniquely identify that row in the table.

Then over here we have a users table. So, maybe you are creating users for your application. So, they have a username, a password and then an email.

So the username is something that is going to be unique. It is something that uniquely identifies each row in the table. And then, we are also storing the password and email.

So, we kind of talked about how relational databases store data in tables. And, when we want to create a relational database, we can use a relational database management system.

And a relational database management system, or a RDBMS is just a database management system that helps you create and maintain a relational database.

Some of the most popular are MySQL, Oracle, PostgeSQL, and MariaDB.

So, there are a bunch of these that are extremely popular. And relational database management systems use something called Structured Query Language or SQL.

And SQL is a standardized language for interracting with relational database management systems.

So remember, a relational database management system is just a software application that we can use in order to create, maintain and do different things to our relational database.

And SQL or Structured Query Language, is the language that we can use to interract with those relational database management systems.

So, we can use SQL to perform CRUD operations, as well as other administrative tasks like user management, security, backup etc.

And we can use SQL to define tables and structures. So a relational database uses tables in order to organize this information, and we can use SQL to define those tables then insert information into those tables.

And SQL is a standardized language which means it is pretty much used on every Relational Database Management System.

However different Relational Database Management Systems will implement SQL just a little bit differently. So, not all SQL code that you use on one relational database management system will pour over to another one without slight modification.

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That’s it. Happy Coding!