A Relation Schema represented by R(A1, A2, ..., An) is made up of the relation name the list of attributes and R Ai that it contains. A relation is described as a set of tuples. Let r be the relation which have set tuples (t1, t2, t3, ..., tn). Each tuple is an ordered list of n-values t=(v1,v2, ..., vn).

The purpose of the relational model is to give a declarative function for specifying queries and data: users directly state what information the database have and what information they want from it, and let the database management system software take care of explain data structures for retrieval procedures and storing the data for answering queries.