WHAT IS RDBMS?
RDBMS stands for Relational Database Management System. RDBMS data is structured in database tables, fields and records. Each RDBMS table consists of database table rows. Each database table row consists of one or more database table fields.
RDBMS store the data into collection of tables, which might be related by common fields (database table columns). RDBMS also provide relational operators to manipulate the data stored into the database tables. Most RDBMS use SQL as database querylanguage.
The most popular RDBMS are MS SQL Server, DB2, Oracle and MySQL.
The relational model is an example of record-based model. Record based models are so named because the database is structured in fixed format records of several types. Each table contains records of a particular type. Each record type defines a fixed number of fields, or attributes. The columns of the table correspond to the attributes of the record types. The relational data model is the most widely used data model, and a vast majority of current database systems are based on the relational model. The relational model was designed by the IBM research scientist and mathematician, Dr. E.F.Codd. Many modern DBMS do not conform to the Codd’s definition of a RDBMS, but nonetheless they are still considered to be RDBMS.
Two of Dr.Codd’s main focal points when designing the relational model were to further reduce data redundancy and to improve data integrity within database systems.
The relational model originated from a paper authored by Dr.codd entitled “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks”, written in 1970. This paper included the following concepts that apply to database management systems for relational databases.
The relation is the only data structure used in the relational data model to represent both entities and relationships between them. Rows of the relation are referred to as tuples of the relation and columns are its attributes. Each attribute of the column are drawn from the set of values known as domain. The domain of an attribute contains the set of values that the attribute may assume.
From the historical perspective, the relational data model is relatively new .The first database systems were based on either network or hierarchical models .The relational data model has established itself as the primary data model for commercial data processing applications. Its success in this domain has led to its applications outside data processing in systems for computer aided design and other environments.