Limitations of Relational Data Model
Relational model is the most commonly used model for databases.
It provides a flexible capability to allow non-programmers to pose general queries quickly and easily, but it also includes the following drawbacks:
Communication barrier.
A typical relational database performs a task by following the three steps:
Move data from the database into the program workarea.
Perform operations on the retrieved data.
Move manipulated data back to database origin.
Impedance mismatch is the difference between the type systems of the programming language and the DBMS DDL and DML.
Inadequate type definition capabilities.
Unable to easily represent complex data structures in more intuitive hierarchical ways.
Poor data manipulation routines since relational systems can be classified as computationally incomplete.
Poor modeling power/structure.
An example of relational databases is given on the right.
It is a book database including three tables: Publishers, Authors, and Books with keys PubID, AuthorID, and ISBN, respectively.