RB: "From the tabular point of view, does it make sense why we can't have duplicate rows in a relation?"

John Sullivan: "As with everything else in life, it depends what you are trying to do (and exactly what you mean when you talk about a DBMS table v. a formal relation). From an operational (transactional) database point of view, for obvious reasons, you don't want duplicate rows (enforce a natural key). But if you're analysing data from various legacy sources (e.g. spreadsheets) it might be useful. Then again, you might introduce a surrogate key to give you more control over what's going on - again, depends on what you are trying to do." --LinkedIn.com

RB: "From the tabular point of view, does it make sense why we can't have duplicate rows in a relation?"

John Sullivan: "As with everything else in life, it depends what you are trying to do (and exactly what you mean when you talk about a DBMS table v. a formal relation). From an operational (transactional) database point of view, for obvious reasons, you don't want duplicate rows (enforce a natural key). But if you're analysing data from various legacy sources (e.g. spreadsheets) it might be useful. Then again, you might introduce a surrogate key to give you more control over what's going on - again, depends on what you are trying to do." --Question about the relational model

Relationships, Rules and Relations

AT: "In my personal understanding, a relation is defined as a set of tuples. Then ... "in the relational model every relation represents a relationship". And then a quote from Chen: "each tuple of entities ... is a relationship". If I use the first and the second statements - I can say that a relationship is a set of tuples. The third statement says that a relationship is a tuple. So far, is a relationship a set of an element of a set? (Or may be a set of sets?)".

AT: Well, I think I am a bit confused now. In my personal understanding, a relation is defined as a set of tuples. Then ... "in the relational model every relation represents a relationship". And then a quote from Chen: "each tuple of entities ... is a relationship". If I use the first and the second statements - I can say that a relationship is a set of tuples. The third statement says that a relationship is a tuple. So far, is a relationship a set of an element of a set? (Or may be a set of sets?)

GE: I argue that there is essentially no difference between relationships between entity (type tables) and between an entity and its attributes. They both represent relationships between two populations of things. Something is an attribute by virtue of there being a relationship. If relationships are represented by foreign keys and the entity tables must be in 1NF, as in the relational model, then all relationships must be at most Many-to-One (a very unnecessary limitation when modeling some user domain).

TF: The relational model was a mathematical construct, derived from set theory. Hence that particular terminology. The entity-relationship model is essentially a directed graph model, where relationships are prominent residents. Not so in the relational model (despite the name), where relationships (between relations, mind you) are not visible and in the SQL implementations is reduced to constraints. Relationships are about structure, which is as important as meaning (the semantics of the terms used in the universe being modeled).

"In Relational Theory sometimes the relationships, where we do our Joins are much more important than the attributes on an Entity." (quoted in LinkedIn.com exchange)