Note of big data dummies:Understanding the role of relational databases in big data

The relational model was invented by Edgar Codd, an IBM scientist, in the 1970s and was used by IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and others. It is still in wide usage today and plays an important role in the evolution of big data.

PostgresSQL (www.postgressql.org), is the most widely used open source relational database available. Its

extensibility and the fact that it is available on many varieties of mainframes  make it a foundation technology for some relational big data databases.

In a relational model, the data is stored in a table. This database would contain a schema — that is, a structural representation of what is in the database.For example, in a relational database, the schema defines the tables,
the fields in the tables, and the relationships between the two. The data is stored in columns, one each for each specific attribute. The data is also stored in the rows. For instance, the two tables shown in Figure below represent
the schema for a simple database. The first table stores product information;the second stores demographic information. Each has various attributes (customer ID, order number, purchase code for a product, and so on). Each
table can be updated with new data, and data can be deleted, read, and updated. This is often accomplished in a relational model using a structured query language (SQL).

Another aspect of the relational model using SQL is that tables can be queried using a common key (that is, the relationship). In Figure above, the common key in the tables is CustomerID.