Topic 3

The Relational Data Model and Relational

Database Constraints

Ahmed Imran Kabir

Adjunct Lecturer
School of Business and Economics
United International University

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 1-1

Informal Definitions

 Informally, a relation looks like a table of values.

 A relation typically contains a set of rows.

 The data elements in each row represent certain facts

that correspond to a real-world entity or relationship
 In the formal model, rows are called tuples

 Each column has a column header that gives an indication

of the meaning of the data items in that column
 In the formal model, the column header is called an
attribute name (or just attribute)

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Example of a Relation

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Informal Definitions
 Key of a Relation:
 Each row has a value of a data item (or set of items)
that uniquely identifies that row in the table
 Called the key
 In the STUDENT table, SSN is the key

 Sometimes row-ids or sequential numbers are

assigned as keys to identify the rows in a table
 Called artificial key or surrogate key

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Formal Definitions - Schema
 The Schema (or description) of a Relation:
 Denoted by R(A1, A2, .....An)
 R is the name of the relation
 The attributes of the relation are A1, A2, ..., An
 Example:
CUSTOMER (Cust-id, Cust-name, Address, Phone#)
 CUSTOMER is the relation name
 Defined over the four attributes: Cust-id, Cust-name,
Address, Phone#
 Each attribute has a domain or a set of valid values.
 For example, the domain of Cust-id is 6 digit numbers.

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Formal Definitions - Tuple
 A tuple is an ordered set of values (enclosed in angled
brackets ‘< … >’)
 Each value is derived from an appropriate domain.
 A row in the CUSTOMER relation is a 4-tuple and would
consist of four values, for example:
 <632895, "John Smith", "101 Main St. Atlanta, GA 30332",
"(404) 894-2000">
 This is called a 4-tuple as it has 4 values
 A tuple (row) in the CUSTOMER relation.
 A relation is a set of such tuples (rows)

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Formal Definitions - Domain
 A domain has a logical definition:
 Example: “USA_phone_numbers” are the set of 10 digit phone
numbers valid in the U.S.
 A domain also has a data-type or a format defined for it.
 The USA_phone_numbers may have a format: (ddd)ddd-dddd where
each d is a decimal digit.
 Dates have various formats such as year, month, date formatted
as yyyy-mm-dd, or as dd mm,yyyy etc.

 The attribute name designates the role played by a domain in a

relation:
 Used to interpret the meaning of the data elements corresponding

to that attribute
 Example: The domain Date may be used to define two attributes
named “Invoice-date” and “Payment-date” with different meanings

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Definition Summary
Informal Terms Formal Terms
Table Relation
Column Header Attribute
All possible Column Domain
Values
Row Tuple

Table Definition Schema of a Relation

Populated Table State of the Relation
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Example – A relation STUDENT

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Same state as previous Figure (but
with different order of tuples)

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CONSTRAINTS
Constraints determine which values are permissible and which
are not in the database.
They are of three main types:
1. Inherent or Implicit Constraints: These are based on the
data model itself. (E.g., relational model does not allow a list as
a value for any attribute)
2. Schema-based or Explicit Constraints: They are
expressed in the schema by using the facilities provided by the
model. (E.g., max. cardinality ratio constraint in the ER model)
3. Application based or semantic constraints: These are
beyond the expressive power of the model and must be
specified and enforced by the application programs.

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Relational Integrity Constraints
 Constraints are conditions that must hold on all valid
relation states.
 There are three main types of (explicit schema-based)
constraints that can be expressed in the relational model:
 Key constraints
 Entity integrity constraints
 Referential integrity constraints
 Another schema-based constraint is the domain
constraint
 Every value in a tuple must be from the domain of its
attribute (or it could be null, if allowed for that attribute)

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Key Constraints (continued)
 If a relation has several candidate keys, one is chosen
arbitrarily to be the primary key.
 The primary key attributes are underlined.
 Example: Consider the CAR relation schema:
 CAR(State, Reg#, SerialNo, Make, Model, Year)
 We chose SerialNo as the primary key
 The primary key value is used to uniquely identify each
tuple in a relation
 Provides the tuple identity
 Also used to reference the tuple from another tuple
 General rule: Choose as primary key the smallest of the
candidate keys (in terms of size)
 Not always applicable – choice is sometimes subjective

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CAR table with two candidate keys –
LicenseNumber chosen as Primary Key

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COMPANY Database Schema

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Populated database state
 Each relation will have many tuples in its current relation
state
 The relational database state is a union of all the
individual relation states
 Whenever the database is changed, a new state arises
 Basic operations for changing the database:
 INSERT a new tuple in a relation
 DELETE an existing tuple from a relation
 MODIFY an attribute of an existing tuple
 Next slide (Fig. 5.6) shows an example state for the
COMPANY database schema shown in Fig. 5.5.

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Populated database state for COMPANY

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Referential Integrity Constraints for COMPANY database

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Update Operations on Relations
 INSERT a tuple.
 DELETE a tuple.
 MODIFY a tuple.
 Integrity constraints should not be violated by the
update operations.
 Several update operations may have to be grouped
together.
 Updates may propagate to cause other updates
automatically. This may be necessary to maintain
integrity constraints.
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In-Class Exercise
(Taken from Exercise 5.15)
Consider the following relations for a database that keeps track of student
enrollment in courses and the books adopted for each course:
STUDENT(SSN, Name, Major, Bdate)
COURSE(Course#, Cname, Dept)
ENROLL(SSN, Course#, Quarter, Grade)
BOOK_ADOPTION(Course#, Quarter, Book_ISBN)
TEXT(Book_ISBN, Book_Title, Publisher, Author)
Draw a relational schema diagram specifying the foreign keys for this
schema.

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