The Relational Database Model (RDBM) [3, 4] is one of the most relevant database models that are being currently used to manage data. Although some alternative models are also being used and implemented (namely, object oriented databases and structured datatypes databases or NoSQL databases [1, 2]), the RDBM still maintains its popularity, as some rankings indicate 1. The RDBM can be formulated from a set-theoretical point of view, such that a tuple is a partial function, and other basic operations in this model such as projections, joins, selections, etc, can be seen as set operations. Another important feature of this model is the existence of constraints, which are rst-order predicates that must hold in a relational database. These constraints mostly describe conditions that must hold in order to keep the consistency of the data in the database, but also help to describe some semantical aspects of the dataset. In this talk, we consider some aspects of the RDBM that have been characterized with FCA, focusing on di erent kinds of constraints that appear in the Relational Model. We review some results that formalize di erent kinds of contraints with FCA [5{8]. We also explain how some concepts of the RDBM such as key, closure, completion, cover can be easily be understood with FCA.
1 http://db-engines.com/en/ranking 7. Baixeries, Jaume and Balcazar, Jose L. Uni ed Characterization of Symmetric Dependencies with Lattices. Contributions to ICFCA 2006. 4th International Conference on Formal Concept Analysis 2005. 8. Baixeries, Jaume. A Formal Concept Analysis framework to model functional dependencies. Mathematical Methods for Learning, 2004.