In a relation, tuples are not inserted in any definite order. Ordering of tuples is not defined as a part of a relation definition. Though, records may be structured later according to some attribute value in the storage systems. For instance, records in PERSON table may be structured according to PERSON_ID. Such organisation or data depends on the requirement of the underlying database application. Though, for the purpose of display we may get them displayed in the sorted order of age. The following table is sorted by age. It is also worth states here that relational model does not permit duplicate tuples
PERSON
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PERSON_ID NAME AGE ADDRESS
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2 Sharad Gupta 33 Pocket 2, Mayur Vihar.
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1 Sanjay Prasad 35 b-4,Modi Nagar
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3 Vibhu Datt 36 c-2, New Delhi
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Super Keys, Candidate Keys and Primary Keys for the Relations
As discussed in the last section ordering of relations does not matter and all tuples in a relation are unique. Though, can we uniquely recognize a tuple in a relation? Let us talk about the concepts of keys that are primarily used for the purpose as above.