This book focuses on the relational database model from a beginning perspective. The title is, therefore, Beginning Database Design. A database is a repository for data. In other words, you can store lots of information in a database. A relational database is a special type of database using structures called tables. Tables are linked together using what are called relationships. You can build tables with relationships between those tables, not only to organize your data, but also to allow later retrieval of information from the database.