Collection Types

Owned by Computer Science Department
Last updated: Aug 05, 2023
2 min read

Collection types in databases refer to data types that can store multiple values or elements in a single column. They're often used when an attribute is multivalued, i.e., can take on more than one value at a time. It's worth noting that not all databases support collection types, and how they are implemented can vary widely.

Three common types of collection types are:

  1. Arrays: An array in a database is an ordered list of elements, all of the same data type. Each element in the array has an index, which is a number corresponding to its position in the array. Indexes usually start at 1 or 0, depending on the database system. Arrays can be one-dimensional (a simple list), or they can be multi-dimensional (an array of arrays). For example, you could define a column of type integer[] to hold an array of integers.

    Here is an example usage in PostgreSQL:

    CREATE TABLE inventory ( item_name text, quantities integer[] ); INSERT INTO inventory (item_name, quantities) VALUES ('ItemA', ARRAY[10, 20, 30]);

    In the above example, quantities is an array that holds an integer array.

  2. Sets: A set is a collection of unique elements, not necessarily in any specific order. The distinguishing feature of a set is that it contains no duplicate values.

    For example, you might use a set to represent a list of tags associated with a blog post:

    CREATE TABLE blog ( id uuid PRIMARY KEY, title text, tags set<text> ); INSERT INTO blog (id, title, tags) VALUES (uuid(), 'My First Blog Post', {'tag1', 'tag2', 'tag3'});

    In the above example, tags is a set that holds a set of text.

  3. Multisets or Bags: Multisets are similar to sets, but they allow duplicate elements. They're not widely supported directly in relational database systems, but can be modeled using separate tables. For example, if you had a blog table and a tag table, you could create a blog_tag table that allows duplicate tags:

    CREATE TABLE blog_tag ( blog_id int, tag_id int, PRIMARY KEY (blog_id, tag_id) );

    In the above example, a single blog could have the same tag multiple times, creating a multiset of tags.

 

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