What Are Characteristics of Relational, Object-Oriented, and Multidimensional Databases? A data model consists of rules and standards that define how the database organizes data. Three popular data models are relational, object-oriented, and multidimensional. A relational database stores data in tables that consist of rows and columns. A relational database developer refers to a file as a relation, a record as a tuple, and a field as an attribute. A relational database user refers to a fi le as a table, a record as a row, and a field as a column. A relationship is a link within the data in a relational database. Structured Query Language (SQL) allows users to manage, update, and retrieve data in a relational database. An object-oriented database (OODB) stores data in objects. An object is an item that contains data, as well as the actions that read or process the data. Applications appropriate for an object-oriented database include a multimedia database, a groupware database, a computer-aided design (CAD) database, a hypertext database, and a hypermedia database. Object-oriented databases often use an object query language (OQL) to manipulate and retrieve data. A multidimensional database stores data in dimensions. These multiple dimensions, sometimes known as a hypercube, allow users to access and analyze any view of the database data. No standard query language exists for multidimensional databases. One application that uses multi dimensional databases is a data warehouse, which is a huge database that stores and manages the data required to analyze historical and current transactions. A smaller version of a data warehouse is the data mart, which contains a database that helps a specific group or department make decisions.