Column (database)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Column" database – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

In a relational database, a column is a set of data values of a particular type, one value for each row of the database.^[1] A column may contain text values, numbers, or even pointers to files in the operating system.^[2] Columns typically contain simple types, though some relational database systems allow columns to contain more complex data types, such as whole documents, images, or even video clips.^{[3][better source needed]} A column can also be called an attribute.

Each row would provide a data value for each column and would then be understood as a single structured data value. For example, a database that represents company contact information might have the following columns: ID, Company Name, Address Line 1, Address Line 2, City, and Postal Code. More formally, a row is a tuple containing a specific value for each column,^[4] for example: (1234, 'Big Company Inc.', '123 East Example Street', '456 West Example Drive', 'Big City', 98765).