I'm working with a "Progress" database. It has about 650 tables in it. Instead of using a Primary Key -> Foreign Key design, the tables basically have the same fields (3-4 fields) replicated in each table. There is nothing which specifically links the tables together via the same field names.
Is this considered a relational database? I'm told that it definitely is but I always thought for a database to be relational, you had to actually have some kind of link between the tables.
Is there a website which would clarify this further?
So the answer would be "Yes" - it is considered a relational database because it has the same field names in each of the tables even though there are no direct links between the fields (and the ability to assign a Primary Key to a field doesn't determine that it's relational)?
In regards to the question of enforcing referential integrity - no - Progress does not support referential integrity. You can define Primary Keys (not foreign keys) and indexes. That is all. And yes, I do agree with blindman's comment about the database.
The programming of a Progress database is done via 4GL (not that it matters). But the reason I ask the question about whether it is or is not considered a relational database is because this has become a rather touchy topic with the rest of the development team and as their new dba, I worried about orphaned records (which do exist) and claimed that it was not a relational database. Of course this comment was met with extreme criticism.
Every table has 3-4 fields in it that are the same. I imported the tables into MSAccess and connected in the links. The attachment shows SOME of the structure where I linked the tables together in MSAccess to try and get a sense of what I was dealing with but there is NO physical capabilities of linking the tables together in Progress itself.
Relational Database gives the meanig of integrity between two or more tables and this is one of the concept which makes the database structure from more complex to most simple one. This is a kind of validation which validates one table elements with another one on behalf of the first one.