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by nailer 2460 days ago
> Relational vs. Document

Tabular vs Document. Having relations is orthogonal to the shape of your data. There are document databases with relations - RethinkDB was pretty popular. Mongo sadly doesn't have them but will probably eventually get them too.
1 comments
takeda 2460 days ago
The adjective relational in a relational database comes from mathematical relations, tuples i.e. data in tables.

It's common misconception that it is from foreign keys.

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nailer 2460 days ago
That's interesting - it seems to both be backed by and conflict with a lot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_model but maybe that's wrong.

I'd still avoid the word 'relational' though - obvious many people will assume 'relational' is related to DB relations rather than tuples (assuming you're right about 'relations' meaning tuples, a lot of the wikipedia contributors are included).

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