The promises and realities of the relational database model
The relational model — tables with a predefined set of typed columns and with cross table references — is one of the oldest surviving models in computer science and in real life deployments. It’s rare to see models that survive decades of software evolution. This survival suggests that the model is sensible, practical, and solid. The relational model makes sense as we organize our data into elements and their properties, and how we associate different elements with each other. Along comes SQL, a


