E. F. Codd introduced the relational model in his 1970 paper on large shared data banks. Data is represented by relations rather than application-visible pointers and access paths, supporting data independence: changing physical organization need not change the meaning of a query.[ref]
The distinction is operationally important. A query can request tuples satisfying a predicate while the system chooses an index or scan. Applications specify the information they need instead of navigating one fixed storage layout. Mathematical relations also expose dependencies among attributes, providing a foundation for database normalization.
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