How do the advanced features in Relational databases work?

Question

To make a long question short, I know about the basics of a Relational Database, Indexing ,Replication, Locking, Concurrency, etc, and SQL syntax (SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE, CREATE,DROP,ALTER,TRUNCATE) when used with simple expressions such as:

SELECT EventID,EventName FROM Events WHERE CustomerID=5 ORDER BY EventType

But I don't understand any of the "advanced" topics in Relational databases, like:

• Domains
• Constraints
• Indices

Will anyone please give me a quick primer, an approximate explanation on what these aspects do and how they work?

You may down-vote and totally trash this question, but please explain to me, approximately how these topics work because I need to get up to speed on Relational databases very quickly. Thanks!

Answer 1

The Wikipedia articles on Relational Databases and the Relational Model are a good place to start. They have links to other articles on the specific topics you mention and these have examples, such as:

• Domains
• Constraints
• Index
• Primary Key and Foreign Key

Answer 2

I think that one issue you're going to face with this is that features vary widely between different RDBMS implementations. Locking, consistency and concurrency are very different in Oracle to <insert random name of other system here>. If there is a particular RDBMS that you have an interest in then I'd urge you to investigate how that particular system implements them, because the devil is in the details, as they say.

For example, start with the Oracle Concepts Guide, available in HTML and PDF from http://docs.oracle.com for each version.