A conventional representation format for a terminological database or termbank is the relational database. The relation is a table whose structure (columns) represents the micro-structure of the terminology, a tuple of attributes generally known as `data categories', and whose records (rows) represent terms and the property values for each data category.
The micro-model specified above has been implemented as an SQL database relation; currently a small number of entries have been incorporated for the purpose of illustration. This section specifies the SQL relational database implementation.
At a later stage, it will be necessary to contemplate generating the database relation from a standard SGML specification such as that given by the TTT Document Type Definition discussed in Section 7.3.
The spoken language term bank EAGLET (EAGLES Term bank) has been implemented with a view to providing both onomasiological and semasiological access to the term entries. The following aspects are treated in the following sections: the database model and the conceptual parts of a relational database; structures in the relational model, and representation of terms and term relations; a simplified version of Codd's standard definition of a relational database system, and the query language; software implementation; distribution of data generation over time, information storage in EAGLET, distribution of data generation over resources, validation of user queries, required system components.