Row (database)

---

title: "Row (database)" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["data-modeling", "relational-model", "database-management-systems"] description: "Record in a relational database table" topic_path: "technology/databases" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_(database)" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Record in a relational database table ::

In a relational database, a row or "record" or "tuple", represents a single, implicitly structured data item in a table. A database table can be thought of as consisting of rows and columns. Each row in a table represents a set of related data, and every row in the table has the same structure.

For example, in a table that represents companies, each row might represent a single company. Columns might represent things like company name, address, etc. In a table that represents the association of employees with departments, each row would associate one employee with one department.

The implicit structure of a row, and the meaning of the data values in a row, requires that the row be understood as providing a succession of data values, one in each column of the table. The row is then interpreted as a relvar composed of a set of tuples, with each tuple consisting of the two items: the name of the relevant column and the value this row provides for that column.

Each column expects a data value of a particular type.

For example, one column might require a unique identifier, another might require text representing a person's name, another might require an integer representing hourly pay in dollars.

References

References

1. [http://www.techopedia.com/definition/4425/database-row "What is a database row?"] Cory Janssen, Techopedia, retrieved 27 June 2014

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::