This means that the information was stored in one long text file, called a tab delimited file . The text file makes it difficult to search for specific information or to create reports that include only certain fields from each record. You can see that you have to search sequentially through the entire file to gather related information, such as age or salary. A relational database allows you to easily find specific information. It also allows you to sort based on any field and generate reports that contain only certain fields from each record.
Relational databases use tables to store information.
In the relational database example, you can quickly compare salaries and ages because of the arrangement of data in columns. The relational database model takes advantage of this uniformity to build completely new tables out of required information from existing tables. In other words, it uses the relationship of similar data to increase the speed and versatility of the database. A typical relational database has anywhere from 10 to more than 1,000 tables. Each table contains a column or columns that other tables can key on to gather information from that table.