Lecture Four

Relational Algebra and

Relational Calculus

Based on Chapter Four of this book:

Database Systems: A Practical Approach

to Design, Implementation and
Management

International Computer Science S.

Carolyn Begg, Thomas Connolly

Lecture 4 - Objectives
 Meaning of the term relational completeness.

 How to form queries in relational algebra.

 Categories of relational DML.

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Type of languages in DBMS

Data Definition Language (DDL)

• Used to define and manage the structure of database
objects.
•Examples: CREATE, ALTER, DROP,
Data Manipulation Language (DML)
•Used to retrieve and manipulate data in the database.
•Examples: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE
Procedural Language vs Non-Procedural Language

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Introduction
 Relational algebra and relational calculus are formal
languages associated with the relational model.
 Informally, relational algebra is a (high-level)
procedural language and relational calculus a non-
procedural language.
 However, formally both are equivalent to one another.
 A language that can produce any relation that can be
derived using relational calculus is relationally
complete.

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Relational Algebra
 Relational algebra operations work on one or
more relations to define another relation
without changing the original relations.

 Both operands and results are relations, so

output from one operation can become input to
another operation.

 Allows expressions to be nested, just as in

arithmetic. This property is called closure.
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Relational Algebra
 5 basic operations in relational algebra:
Selection, Projection, Cartesian product, Union,
and Set Difference.

 These perform most of the data retrieval

operations needed.

 Also have Join, Intersection, and Division

operations, which can be expressed in terms of 5
basic operations.
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Relational Algebra Operations

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Relational Algebra Operations

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Selection (or Restriction)
 predicate (R)
– Works on a single relation R and defines a
relation that contains only those tuples (rows) of
R that satisfy the specified condition (predicate).

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Example - Selection (or Restriction)
 List all staff with a salary greater than £10,000.

salary > 10000 (Staff)

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Projection
 col1, . . . , coln(R)
– Works on a single relation R and defines a
relation that contains a vertical subset of R,
extracting the values of specified attributes and
eliminating duplicates.

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Example - Projection
 Produce a list of salaries for all staff, showing only
staffNo, fName, lName, and salary details.

staffNo, fName, lName, salary(Staff)

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Union
 RS
– Union of two relations R and S defines a relation
that contains all the tuples of R, or S, or both R
and S, duplicate tuples being eliminated.
– R and S must be union-compatible.

 If R and S have I and J tuples, respectively, union

is obtained by concatenating them into one relation
with a maximum of (I + J) tuples.

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Example - Union
 List all cities where there is either a branch office
or a property for rent.

city(Branch)  city(PropertyForRent)

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Set Difference
 R–S
– Defines a relation consisting of the tuples that
are in relation R, but not in S.
– R and S must be union-compatible.

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Example - Set Difference
 List all cities where there is a branch office but no
properties for rent.

city(Branch) – city(PropertyForRent)

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Intersection
 RS
– Defines a relation consisting of the set of all
tuples that are in both R and S.
– R and S must be union-compatible.

 Expressed using basic operations:

R  S = R – (R – S)

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Example - Intersection
 List all cities where there is both a branch office
and at least one property for rent.

city(Branch)  city(PropertyForRent)

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Cartesian product
 RXS
– Defines a relation that is the concatenation of
every tuple of relation R with every tuple of
relation S.

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Example - Cartesian Product
 List the names and comments of all clients who have
viewed a property for rent.
(clientNo, fName, lName(Client)) X (clientNo, propertyNo,comment
(Viewing))

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Example - Cartesian Product and Selection
 Use selection operation to extract those tuples where
Client.clientNo = Viewing.clientNo.
Client.clientNo = viewing.clientNo((clientNo,fName,lName(Client)) 
(clientNo,propertyNo,comment(Viewing)))

 Cartesian product and Selection can be reduced to a single

operation called a Join.
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Join Operations
 Join is a derivative of Cartesian product.

 Equivalent to performing a Selection, using join

predicate as selection formula, over Cartesian
product of the two operand relations.

 One of the most difficult operations to implement

efficiently in an RDBMS and one reason why
RDBMSs have intrinsic performance problems.

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Join Operations
 Various forms of join operation
– Theta join
– Equijoin (a particular type of Theta join)
– Natural join
– Outer join
– Semijoin

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Theta join (-join)
 R FS

– Defines a relation that contains tuples

satisfying the predicate F from the Cartesian
product of R and S.
– The predicate F is of the form R.ai  S.bi
where  may be one of the comparison
operators (<, , >, , =, ).

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Theta join (-join)
 Can rewrite Theta join using basic Selection and
Cartesian product operations.

R FS = F(R  S)

 Degree of a Theta join is sum of degrees of the

operand relations R and S. If predicate F contains
only equality (=), the term Equijoin is used.

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Example - Equijoin
 List the names and comments of all clients who
have viewed a property for rent.
(clientNo,fName,lName(Client)) Client.clientNo = Viewing.clientNo
(clientNo,propertyNo,comment(Viewing))

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Natural Join
 R S
– An Equijoin of the two relations R and S over all
common attributes x. One occurrence of each
common attribute is eliminated from the result.

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Example - Natural Join
 List the names and comments of all clients who
have viewed a property for rent.
(clientNo,fName,lName(Client))
(clientNo,propertyNo,comment(Viewing))

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Outer join
 To display rows in the result that do not have
matching values in the join column, use Outer
join.

 R S
– (Left) outer join is join in which tuples from
R that do not have matching values in
common columns of S are also included in
result relation.

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Example - Left Outer join
 Produce a status report on property viewings.

propertyNo,street,city(PropertyForRent) Viewing

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Other Languages
 Transform-oriented languages are non-procedural
languages that use relations to transform input
data into required outputs (e.g. SQL).

 Graphical languages provide user with picture of

the structure of the relation. User fills in example
of what is wanted and system returns required
data in that format (e.g. QBE).

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Other Languages
 4GLs can create complete customized application
using limited set of commands in a user-friendly,
often menu-driven environment.

 Some systems accept a form of natural language,

sometimes called a 5GL, although this
development is still a an early stage.

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