Chapter 3 : Relational Model

• Structure of Relational Databases

• Fundamental Relational-Algebra Operations
• Additional Relational-Algebra Operations
• Extended Relational-Algebra Operations
• Null Values
• Modification of Database
 Terminologies related To
Relational Model
• Relation – Defined as a table with collection of rows
and columns. Data can be stored in the form of a 2D
table. Rows will be records and columns will be
attributes
• Attribute – Defined as a named column of a relation.
The entities are relations and their attributes are
columns of the relation
• Domain – Defined as a set of allowed values for one
or more attributes
• Tuple – It is a row of a relation. Tuple can appear in
any order and the relation will still remain the same
relation
• Extension (state) of a relation – Defined as the set of
tuples that appear in that relation at any given instant
of time. Extension is same as view of the table
 Terminologies related To
Relational Model
• Intension of a relation – A permanent part of the
relation, independent of time.
• Degree of a relation – Defined as the number of
attributes it contains. It is property of the intension of
a relation
• Cardinality of a relation – Defined as the number of
tuples it contains. It is the property of the extension
of the relation
• Relational database – Defined as the collection of
normalized / structured relations with distinct relation
names
• N-ary relation – A relation with degree N
Structure of Relational Databases

• A relational database consist of collection

of Tables, each is assigned a unique name
• A row in a table represents a relationship
among a set of values
 Basic Structure
Let us consider the “account” table. It has three
column headers,
account_number, branch_number, balance
• These headers are attributes
• For each, there is a set of permitted values,
called the DOMAIN of that attribute.
– For attribute branch_name the domain is the set of all
branch names. At physical level the domain of branch
name is string of characters
Let,
• D1 - set of all account no.s
• D2 – set of all branch_names
• D3 - set of all balances
 Basic Structure
Any row of “Account” table must consist of a 3-
tuples(v1, v2, v3)
v1 – account no. (v1 is in D1)
v2 – branch name (v2 is in D2)
v3 – balance (v3 is in D3)
i.e. “Account” is a subset of
D1 x D2x D3
• A Relation is a subset of Cartesian product of
list of domains
 Basic Structure
• A TUPLE variable is a variable whose domain is
the set of all tuples
i.e. tuple variable t[account_number] denotes
the value of t on account number attribute
• t[account_number] = “A-101” or
• t[1] = “A-101”
• t is in relation r
• For all relations r, the domains of all attributes
of r must be atomic. A domain is Atomic if
elements of the domain are individual units
• Null attributes should be eliminated if at all
possible
 Database Schema
We must differentiate between
• Database Schema
• Database instance

• A relation corresponds to the programming

language notation of a variable
• A relational schema corresponds to the
programming language notation type definition
• A relation instance corresponds to the
programming language notation of a value of a
variable
e.g. Account_schema(account_number,
branch_name, balance)
“Account” is a relation on Account_schema
account(Account_schema) i.e. r(R)
 Relational Model Notation
• A relation schema R of degree n is denoted by R(A1, A2,
…, An)
• An n-tuple t in a relation r(R) is denoted by t =<v 1, v2,
…, vn> where vi is the value corresponding to attribute Ai
For component value of a tuple
– T[Ai], t.Ai and t[i] refers to the value vi in t for attribute Ai
– T[Au, Aw, …, Az] and t.(Au, Aw, …, Az) where Au, Aw, …, Az is a
list of attributes from R, refers to the subtuple of values
<vu, vw, …, vz) from t corresponding to the attributes
specified in the list
• The letter Q, R, S denote relation names
• The letter q, r, s denote relation states
• The letter t, u, v denote tuples
• Name of relation indicates the current set of tuples in
that relation whereas STUDENT(name, rollno,…) refers
relation schema only
 Relational algebra
• Relational algebra and relational
calculus are formal languages
associated with the relational model
• Both operands and results are
relations, so output from one
operation can become input to
another operation
• Allows expressions to be nested,
just as in arithmetic. This property
is called closure.
 Relational Algebra
• Five basic operations in relational
algebra are Selection, Projection,
Cartesian product, Union, and Set
Difference
• These perform most of the data
retrieval operations needed
• Also have Join, Intersection, and
Division operations, which can be
expressed in terms of 5 basic
operations
Selection (or Restriction)
 Assignment Operation

• Used to write relational-algebra

expression in parts using
assignment to a temporary relation
variable
• Denoted by
• Similar to assignment in
programming language
 Modification of the Database
• How to add, remove, or change
information in the database
• We express database modification
using the assignment operation
 Modification of the DB - Deletion
• Deletion in relational-algebra is much same as
a query
• Instead of displaying tuples to the user,
selected tuples are removed from the database
• We can delete only whole tuples; we cannot
delete values on only particular attributes
• Deletion is expressed by
r r–E
Where,
r – relation
E – relational-algebra query
 Modification of the DB - Insertion
• To insert data into a relation, we specify a tuple
to be inserted or write a query whose result is a
set of tuples to be inserted
• The attribute values for inserted tuples must be
members of the attribute’s domain
• Tuples inserted must be of correct arity
• Insertion is expressed by
r rUE
Where,
r – relation
E – relational-algebra expression
 Modification of the DB - Updation
• In some situations we wish to change a value in
a tuple without changing all values in the tuple
• Uses generalized projection for updation
• Insertion is expressed by
r П F1, F2, . . ., Fn(r)
Where,
Fi – ith attribute of r, if the ith attribute is not
updated , or if the attribute is to be updated Fi
is an expression, involving only constants and
the attributes of r, which gives new value to r
• To update selected tuples from r
r П F1, F2, . . ., Fn(бp (r)) U (r - бp (r))
 Extended Relational-algebra
operations
• Generalized projection
• Outer join
– Left
– Right
– Full
• Aggregation Functions
 Generalized Projection
• It extends the projection operation
by allowing arithmetic functions to
be used in the projection list
• Denoted by
П F1, F2, . . ., Fn(E)
Where,
E – relational-algebra expression
F1, F2, . . ., Fn – arithmetic expressions
involving constants and attributes in the
schema of E
 Rename Operation
• Used to give a name (alias) to relational-
algebra expressions or relation
• Denoted by Greek letter rho

X (E)

• E – relational algebra expression

• X name given to relational-algebra query
expression
• How to Read it
Result of relational-algebra query expression E
under the name X
 Rename Operation
• Assume relational algebra expression E
has n-arity then

X(A1, A2, . . . , An)(E)

• How to Read it
Result of relational-algebra query
expression E under the name X, and with
the attributes renamed to A1, A2, . . . , An
 Aggregate Functions
• It take collection of values and return a
single value as a result
List of aggregate functions
• Sum – returns the sum of values
• Avg – returns the average of values
• Count – returns no. of elements in the collection
• Min – returns the minimum value in the collection
• Max - returns the maximum value in the collection

Note - To eliminate duplicates, same function

names with the addition of the hyphenated
string distinct
 Aggregate Functions
• To find out the total sum of salaries of all
employees
sum salary (employee)

• Find the number of departments in the

employee relation
count-distinct departmentno (employee)
Aggregate Functions on Groups
• In some circumstances we would like to apply
aggregate function not only to the single set of
tuples but to several groups, where each group
is set of tuples
• Can be done by using an operation called
Grouping
• Denoted by aggregation operator Ç
G1, G2, . . ., Gn ÇF1 A1, F2 A2, . . ., Fm Am ( E )
Where,
E – relational-algebra expression
G1, G2, …, Gn – list of attributes on which to
group
Fi – an aggregate function
Ai – an attribute name
Aggregate Functions on Groups
• The tuples in result of expression E are
partitioned into groups such that
– All tuples in a group have same values for
G1, G2, . . . , Gn
– All tuples in different groups have
different values for G1, G2, . . . , Gn
• For each group (g1, g2, . . ., gn) the result
has a tuple (g1, g2, . . ., gn, a1, a2, . . .,
an)
• Where for each i, ai is the result of applying
aggregate function Fi on the multiset of
values for attribute Ai in the group
 View Definition
• A view is defined using the create
view statement. To define a view, we
must give the view name, and must
state the query that computes the
view. The create view statement is
CREATE VIEW v as <query-expression>
Where
query-expression is any relational-algebra
query expression
 View Definition
• A clerk who needs to see all loan data
in the loan relation except loan-amount
CREATE VIEW branch-loan as
Пbranch_name, loan_number(loan)
• Insertion using view in loan relation
branch-loan branch-loan U {(“new panvel”, “L-37”)}
Views Defined Using Other
Views
CREATE VIEW branch-loanno as
Пloan_number(branch-loan)
Types of Keys