Computer Science · A3.2 Database Design

A3.2.4 — Constructing Tables for Relational Databases

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IB DP Computer Science — A3 Databases — Database design | SL | A3.2.4

📋 What You Will Learn

  • Construct well-defined relational tables from a scenario, choosing sensible attributes and data types
  • Define and correctly use primary keys, foreign keys, composite keys and concatenated keys
  • Link tables to represent one-to-many and many-to-many relationships
  • Write the tables as CREATE TABLE statements in SQL
  • Explain how well-defined tables enforce entity, referential and domain integrity

🧩 Why This Matters A single giant spreadsheet of "everything" repeats the same student name on every row and breaks the moment someone changes their phone number in one place but not another. A relational database splits the data into small, single-purpose tables and then links them with keys — each fact is stored exactly once, and the links reassemble the full picture on demand.

Anatomy of a Relational Table

📖 Definition — Table (relation) A table is a named collection of related data organised into rows (records/tuples), each describing one instance of an

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