5 Table Management

In Oracle NoSQL Database, data is stored and organized in tables. This chapter describes tables and creating and managing tables in Oracle NoSQL Database.

A table is an unordered collection of record items, all of which have the same record type. We call this record type the table schema. The table schema is defined by the CREATE TABLE statement. The records of a table are called rows and the record fields are called columns. Therefore, an Oracle NoSQL Database table is a generalization of the (normalized) relational tables found in more traditional RDBMSs.

Although table rows are records, records are not rows. This is because, rows have some additional properties that are not part of the table schema (i.e., they are not stored as top-level columns or nested fields). To extract the values of such properties, the functions listed in the Functions on Rows section must be used.

This chapter contains the following topics:

• CREATE TABLE Statement
• SHOW TABLES Statement
• DESCRIBE TABLE Statement
• Table Hierarchies
• Using the IDENTITY Column
• Sequence Generator
• DROP TABLE Statement
• ALTER TABLE Statement
• Altering an IDENTITY Column