Journal of Information Technology & Software Engineering
Open Access

Abstract

On Database Relationships versus Mathematical Relations

Christian Mancas

Unfortunately, the widespread used one-to-many, many-to-one, one-to-one, and many-to-many database relationships lack precision and are very often leading to confusions that affect the quality of conceptual data modeling and database design. This paper advocates replacing them with the rigorous math notions of relations and (one-toone) functions.