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Features Of A Relational Database

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Features of a relational database

I will be explaining all the features of a relational database such as entities, attributes, relationships and benefits and will be giving examples on each of these to show how they affect the database.
Primary keys:
The main feature of a relation database would be the primary key. It is a unique identifier set to each and every record which moves across different tables in relationships. A good example of a primary key is a Social Security number. The primary keys job is to make each record unique and lets data to be kept in more than one table. Each table within a relational database will have to have a field for the primary key. Foreign keys:
A …show more content…

Also seeing it from a SQL Server point of view having an identity field as the primary key is good because primary keys are clustered indexes. If that key automatically increments you don 't have to worry about braking primary key rules and other different problems when putting in values. Data types
Data type Example
Text- allows you to type text within the field First name: Andrew
Surname: Smith
Address: 12, High street
Number- Allows whole numbers and decimals but no text with a field 10 or 15.5(decimal)
Currency- This automatically changes to data to have a £ sign in front of it and also have 2 decimal places £12,000
Date/time- This restricts the data to only be 1-31 for day and 1-12 for month and also checks to see if the date is valid. It can also be broken down into short, medium and long date/time. Date: 31/01/14, 31-Jan-14, 31 January 2014
Time: 19:24, 7:24 PM, 19:24:30
Autonumber- This will increase by 1 each time a new record is added to the database Record 1 : 1
Record 2 : 2
Record 3 : 3
Boolean (yes/no)- This is a data type that restricts the record to only two choices, either yes or no. Yes : No
On : Off

Validation rules
Validation within a database is used to make sure the data entered into the database is sensible and makes sense, also to avoid any typing errors. You make a rule which only allows certain things to be typed into the

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