Discuss the types of relational databases and their advantages - Essay Example

TYPES OF RELATIONAL DATABASES IN THEIR ADVANTAGES Types of relational databases in their advantages Affiliation A relational database stores all the data in tables. All the tables have the identical arrangement duplicated in each row (similar to a MS Excel spreadsheet) and the relations between the tables that make them a "relational" table (Bolton, 2011). The collection of relations or tables is known as a relational database. Additionally, the rows of a table in a relational database are acknowledged as tuples and each column of a table is known as an attribute.

In this scenario, a relation turns into a group of tuples with the identical attributes. In addition, different functions such as select, project and join can be performed on these relations. In this scenario, the Join function is used to unite relations, the project operation is performed to identify attributes and the select queries are performed for accessing data. However, like other database models, a relational database also supports several other functions such as insert, update and delete (Oak, 2011).

In relational databases, normalization plays a very important role. In addition, the relational activities, facilitated by the relational databases work in an excellent way with normalized tables. Additionally, relational databases support dynamic views, which is an important concept of databases. Though, in a relational database, a view is not acknowledged as an element of the physical design, since it is dynamic. In addition, views can divide data, combine and shorten several unnecessary relations, which reduce the data storage requirements.

Another important advantage of relational database is that it uses SQL that is a simple and human-readable language (Oak, 2011).Moreover, relational databases offer an excellent security because they support access permissions, which facilitate the database administrator to apply need-based permissions in order to get access to the data stored in database tables. Furthermore, relational databases offer high level performance, power, and facilities to latest hardware technologies as well as a capability to deal with all types of data and users requirements (Oak, 2011).

ReferencesBolton, D. (2011). What is a Relational Database? Retrieved September 19, 2011, from About.com: http://cplus.about.com/od/introductiontoprogramming/p/database.htmOak, M. (2011, September 21). Advantages of Relational Databases. Retrieved September 24, 2011, from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/advantages-of-relational-databases.html