On 2025-Aug-22, Tom Lane wrote: > Hmmm ... maybe something like > > Mathematically, a "relation" is a set of tuples; this is the sense > meant in the term "relational database". > > In Postgres, "relation" is commonly used to mean a database object > that has a name and a list of attributes defined in a specific > order. Tables, sequences, views, foreign tables, materialized > views, composite types, and indexes are all relations. A relation > in this sense is a container or descriptor for a set of tuples. > > "Class" is an alternative but archaic term. The system catalog > pg_class holds an entry for each Postgres relation.
Thanks, pushed like that. I changed "a database object" to "an SQL object", because that's a term we have a definition for. (I also wrote "PostgreSQL" where you had "Postgres". I think it might be okay now to change the product name in various places here, but it seems better to do it consistently across the whole page.) -- Álvaro Herrera Breisgau, Deutschland — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/ "¿Qué importan los años? Lo que realmente importa es comprobar que a fin de cuentas la mejor edad de la vida es estar vivo" (Mafalda)
