Page 1425 - (ISC)² CISSP Certified Information Systems Security Professional Official Study Guide

of rows and columns. In fact, each table looks similar to a spreadsheet
file. The row and column structure provides for one-to-one data

mapping relationships. The main building block of the relational
database is the table (also known as a relation). Each table contains a
set of related records. For example, a sales database might contain the
following tables:

Customers table that contains contact information for all the
organization’s clients

Sales Reps table that contains identity information on the
organization’s sales force

Orders table that contains records of orders placed by each
customer

Object-Oriented Programming and Databases

Object-relational databases combine relational databases with the
power of object-oriented programming. True object-oriented
databases (OODBs) benefit from ease of code reuse, ease of
troubleshooting analysis, and reduced overall maintenance.
OODBs are also better suited than other types of databases for
supporting complex applications involving multimedia, CAD,
video, graphics, and expert systems.

Each table contains a number of attributes, or fields. Each attribute

corresponds to a column in the table. For example, the Customers
table might contain columns for company name, address, city, state,
zip code, and telephone number. Each customer would have its own
record, or tuple, represented by a row in the table. The number of rows
in the relation is referred to as cardinality, and the number of
columns is the degree. The domain of an attribute is the set of
allowable values that the attribute can take. Figure 20.8 shows an

example of a Customers table from a relational database.