Expert: Peter Choi - 4/20/2009

Question
What is table? what is field, record,column and row and their difference?

Answer
Hi there,

In databases, a table is composed of attributes, typically called columns. Theses columns (or fields) hold information that is relevant to the table. An example of a table and columns:

PERSON (table)
------
PERSON_ID     NUMBER(10)
LAST_NAME     VARCHAR(50) <-- Column identifier and type
FIRST_NAME    VARCHAR(50)
BIRTH_DATE    DATE

In this example, the person table (above) contains 4 columns (or fields), namely PERSON_ID, LAST_NAME, FIRST_NAME and BIRTH_DATE. Each column contains some attribute type. PERSON_ID is defined as a number type with a length of 10 (or up to 10 digits). The LAST_NAME column is defined as a variable character of length 50 (or up to 50 characters).


A Row (or tuple in database relational language) is made up of 1 entry in the PERSON table. So 1 row in this table could look like this:

PERSION_ID      LAST_NAME      FIRST_NAME     BIRTH_DATE
----------      -------------  -------------  -----------
0000192873      Smith          John           04-DEC-1994

A ROW and RECORD can be used interchangeably.

Hope this helps.

Peter