Question

Various documents define row as being synonymous with record. Unfortunately, a record can be a list or a single item. All the same, a row usually contains more than one item but is sometimes called “a single entry”.

A field can be a container (for example, in html), which could be considered a place to input one item, or it could be considered a place where many items are entered (albeit on different occasions, sometimes).

It sure would be nice if someone could put it in simple terms. For example, a row is the result of a single-item, single-field entry via an insert statement. A field represents all rows and intersects a column.

Can anybody provide a clear answer because google just isn’t cutting it. Thank you.

Edit:

In excel it sure is cut-and-dry. Column is all horizontal. Row is all vertical. Cell is a row-column pair; a single entry. Even though relational database languages are like working with multiple spreadsheets (tables), the column, row, cell approach seems to make the most sense.

I am looking at various different explanations that don’t seem to agree with one another in the answers. Can we operationally define the terms for the tutorial I am presently working on, which is not clear? Link: http://zetcode.com/databases/sqlitetutorial/introduction/#about

Answer 1

If this is a table…

O--O-------------O-------------O
|ID|   my_col_1  |   my_col_2  |
O--O-------------O-------------O
|0 | fskdjfh     | jfkhgdkfj   |
|1 | NULL        | hfkjsdh     |
|2 | jfkdhsdkjh  | NULL        |
|3 | fdfhkjh     | NULL        |
|4 | NULL        | NULL        |
O--O-------------O-------------O

This is a row…

|0 | fskdjfh     | jfkhgdkfj   |

And this is a field…

| jfkhgdkfj   |

Hows that?