Chapter 8. Hierarchical Queries

A relational database is based upon sets, with each table representing a set. However, there are some types of information that are not directly amenable to the set data structure. Think, for example, of an organization chart, a bill of material in a manufacturing and assembly plant, or a family tree. These types of information are hierarchical in nature, and most conveniently represented in a tree structure. In this chapter we discuss how we can represent such hierarchical information in a relational table. We also discuss in detail various SQL constructs that we need to use to extract hierarchical information from a relational table.