[Techtalk] Relational databases?

[Jeff Dike]

kath at kathweb.net said:
> What is it exactly?  I think I understand the concept, but I'm not
> sure. 

At its base, a relational database is a mathematical abstraction.  There
are a set of operations that have certain semantics that something implements
and it's relational.

MySQL implements those operations, so that makes it relational.  You don't
have to do anything to turn on relationalness or anything like that.

I did some quick googling but I didn't turn up any good descriptions of
the relational operators.  The one thing I do remember about them is they
were invented by a guy called Cobb at IBM.

				Jeff