Database Systems

Relational Algebra

What are Relational Algebra and Relational

Calculus?
• Relational algebra and relational calculus are
formal languages associated with the relational
model.
– Informally, relational algebra is a (high-level)
procedural language and relational
calculus a non- procedural language.
– However, formally both are equivalent to one
another.
• A language that produces a relation that can be
derived using relational calculus is relationally
complete.

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 What is Relational Algebra?
• Relational algebra operations work on one or
more relations to define another relation
without changing the original relations.
• Both operands and results are relations, so
output from one operation can become input to
another operation.
• Allows expressions to be nested, just as in
arithmetic. This property is called closure.

Operations of Relational Algebra

• Five basic operations in relational algebra:
Selection, Projection, Cartesian product,
Union, and Set Difference.
• These perform most of the data retrieval
operations needed.
• Also have Join, Intersection, and Division
operations, which can be expressed in terms of
5 basic operations.

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Operations of Relational Algebra

Operations of Relational Algebra

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 Selection (or Restriction)

•predicate (R)
– Works on a single relation R and defines a relation
that contains only those tuples (rows) of R that
satisfy the specified condition (predicate).

Selection – An Example
• List all staff with a salary greater than £10,000.
salary > 10000 (Staff)

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 Projection

•col1, . . . , coln(R)
– Works on a single relation R and defines a relation
that contains a vertical subset of R, extracting the
values of specified attributes and eliminating
duplicates.

Projection – An Example
• Produce a list of salaries for all staff, showing
only staffNo, fName, lName, and salary
details.
staffNo, fName, lName, salary(Staff)

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 Union
•RS
– Union of two relations R and S defines a relation
that contains all the tuples of R, or S, or both R
and S, duplicate tuples being eliminated.
– R and S must be union-compatible.
• If R and S have I and J tuples, respectively,
union is obtained by concatenating them into
one relation with a maximum of (I + J) tuples.

Union – An Example
• List all cities where there is either a branch
office or a property for rent.
city(Branch)  city(PropertyForRent)

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 Set Difference
•R–S
– Defines a relation consisting of the tuples that
are in relation R, but not in S.
– R and S must be union-compatible.

Set Difference – An Example

• List all cities where there is a branch office
but no properties for rent.
city(Branch) – city(PropertyForRent)

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 Intersection
•RS
– Defines a relation consisting of the set of all
tuples that are in both R and S.
– R and S must be union-compatible.
• Expressed using basic operations:
R  S = R – (R – S)

Intersection – An Example
• List all cities where there is both a branch
office and at least one property for rent.
city(Branch)  city(PropertyForRent)

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 Cartesian Product
•RXS
– Defines a relation that is the concatenation
of every tuple of relation R with every tuple
of relation S.

Cartesian Product – An Example

• List the names and comments of all clients who have
viewed a property for rent.
(clientNo, fName, lName(Client)) X (clientNo, propertyNo,
comment
(Viewing))

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 Cartesian Product and Selection –
An Example
• Use selection operation to extract those tuples where
Client.clientNo = Viewing.clientNo.
Client.clientNo = Viewing.clientNo((clientNo, fName,
lName(Client)) 
(clientNo, propertyNo, comment(Viewing)))

• Cartesian product and Selection can be reduced to a single

operation called a Join.

Join Operations
• Join is a derivative of Cartesian product.
• Equivalent to performing a Selection, using
join predicate as selection formula, over
Cartesian product of the two operand relations.
• One of the most difficult operations to
implement efficiently in an RDBMS and one
reason why RDBMSs have intrinsic
performance problems.

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 Join Operations
• Various forms of join operation
– Theta join
– Equijoin (a particular type of Theta join)
– Natural join
– Outer join
– Semijoin

Theta join (θ-join)

• R FS
– Defines a relation that contains tuples
satisfying the predicate F from the Cartesian
product of R and S.
– The predicate F is of the form R.ai  S.bi where

may be one of the comparison operators (<, ,
>,
, =, ).

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 Theta join (θ-join)
• Can rewrite Theta join using basic Selection
and Cartesian product operations.
R FS = F(R  S)

• Degree of a Theta join is sum of degrees of the

operand relations R and S. If predicate F
contains only equality (=), the term Equijoin is
used.

Equijoin – An Example
• List the names and comments of all clients
who have viewed a property for rent.
(clientNo, fName, lName(Client))

Client.clientNo = Viewing.clientNo (clientNo, propertyNo,

comment(Viewing))

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 Natural Join
• RS
– An Equijoin of the two relations R and S over
all common attributes x. One occurrence of each
common attribute is eliminated from the result.

Natural Join – An Example

• List the names and comments of all clients
who have viewed a property for rent.
(clientNo, fName, lName(Client)) (clientNo,

propertyNo, comment(Viewing))

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 Outer Join
• To display rows in the result that do not have
matching values in the join column, use Outer
join.
•R S
– (Left) outer join is join in which tuples from R
that do not have matching values in common
columns of S are also included in result relation.

Outer Join – An Example

• Produce a status report on property viewings.

propertyNo, street, city(PropertyForRent)

Viewing

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 Semijoin
•R F S
– Defines a relation that contains the tuples of R
that participate in the join of R with S.
• Can rewrite Semijoin using Projection and
Join:
–R F S = A(R F S)

Semijoin – An Example
• List complete details of all staff who work at
the branch in Glasgow.
Staff
Staff.branchNo=Branch.branchNo(city=‘Glasgow’(Branch))

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 Division
•RS
– Defines a relation over the attributes C that consists of set
of tuples from R that match combination of every tuple in
S.

• Expressed using basic operations:

T1  C(R)
T2  C((S X T1) – R)
T  T1 – T2

Division – An Example
• Identify all clients who have viewed all
properties with three rooms.
(clientNo, propertyNo(Viewing)) 
(propertyNo(rooms = 3 (PropertyForRent)))

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