What is a database record?

A database record is a row of data in a database table consisting of a single value from each column of data in the table. The data in the columns in a table are all of the same type of data, whereas the rows represent a given instance. Example Table: ========================================================== Column Names: ID FirstName LastName BirthDate ========================================================== 1 George Gray 1/6/1960 2 Thomas Green 2/29/2000 3 Cynthia Black 5/30/1976 ========================================================== For the given table above, an example of a column of data would be FirstName. All the values in that column are first names. An example record (or row) would be the record with ID = 2 which represents the record for Thomas Green and contains each field from that row. Properly designed relational databases use "primary keys" to uniquely identify records in a database. The value (or values) that compose the key must uniquely identify the entire row and only that entire row in that table. That primary key can then appear in another table to represent a relationship between that table and another table. In the example above, the ID column would serve as the primary key for the table.