Re: cdt glossary - TABLE

dawn wrote:
> Do you call the result of a SQL/relational query a "table" or just
> stick with "set"? I would guess that people would intuitively consider
> a result set to be a table. We can define it either way and usually
> whether it is ordered or not is not relevant, but when we have a need
> for precision, it would be good to know which is most commonly
> accepted.

I tend to use the words "table" and "relation" as synonyms when talking about databases, mainly for pedagogical reasons; maybe I shouldn't though. I just think people new to databases get confused by the term "relation" and think it's something to do with the relationships between tables - I think I certainly did. If I want to talk about SQL tables which may have duplicate rows I'd use the term "SQL tables".

> Do models other than the relational model use the term "table" and, if
> so, do these models define "table" to be the same as relational
> theorists define it? I think of a table as being able to be modeled
> with a mathematical matrix, but I might not be considered a good
> relational disciple ;-)

Loads of words are overloaded with meaning so I think we're onto a losing battle trying to have definitions that are consistent across disciplines!

A table in relational database-speak could be totally different to a table in math-speak or HTML-speak or even SQL-speak.

In most non-RDBMS contexts a table would be considered to have order of both columns and rows, I'd say, just like a mathematical matrix. But all this is just convention really.

Paul. Received on Wed Jul 13 2005 - 13:55:48 CDT