Question

In databases what’s the difference between the words “row” and “record”? Is it that a record contains multiple rows?

EDIT: are they exactly the same?

EDIT 2: The first sentence of chapter 14 of Databases Systems The Complete Book reads

It is not sufficient simply to scatter the records that represent
tuples of a relation among various blocks.

Are you guys sure your sure that records and tuples mean the same thing?

Answer 1

There is no real difference philosophically. Again the taxonomy is not the same in every language, every database etc, so there is no one answer. But you can consider it this way

A data base has tables. Each table just like when you draw a table in Excel, has columns and rows. So we can say each table has rows.

But it is possible that data for a single type of entity is stored in multiple tables. For example, you can have Employee ID, First name, Last name in one table called Employee and that can be a row for each employee.

But it is also possible that additional information like address is stored elsewhere called Address.

So later when you query and get full details of the employee, you get employee details from Employee and address table. That can be considered a record or full record. It is made up of data from rows of multiple tables.

But again, there is no one answer.