The primary purpose of a database is to store data. Data is information, usually text-based, but not always, and this data could be anything from a company phone directory, to patient medical information, to an auto parts list, or even reviews of gourmet hot sauces complete with pictures of the bottles.

Database servers such as MariaDB store information, no matter what it is, in a structure called a table. Tables are two-dimensional data structures containing rows and columns. A row corresponds to a single record in a database and records are divided into columns. Think of database tables like a specialized spreadsheet.

The columns in a database can have relationships defined in one way or another. For example, the id column in an employee table may relate to the employee_id column in an address table. These relationships (also called foreign keys) are why we call MariaDB a relational database server.

A database without tables of data is nothing more than an...