Relational Database Management: A relational database management system must use only its relational capabilities to manage the information stored in the database.
Information Representation: All information stored in a relational database must be represented only by data item values that are stored in the tables that make up the database. Associations between data items must not be logically represented in any other way, such as by using pointers from one table to another.
Logical Accessibility: Every data item value stored in a relational database must be accessible by stating the name of the table it is stored in, the name of the column under which it is stored and the value of the primary key that defines the row in which it is stored.
Representation of Null Values: The database management system must have a consistent method for representing null values. For example, null values for numeric must be distinct from zero or any other numeric value and null characters strings must be distinct from strings of blanks or any other character values.
Catalog Facilities: The logical description of a relational database must be represented in the same manner as ordinary data, so that the facilities of the relational database management system can be used to maintain database descriptions.
Data Languages: A relational database management system may support many different types of languages for describing data and accessing the database. However, there must be at least one language that uses ordinary character strings to support the definitions of data, the definition of views, the manipulation of data constraints or data integrity, information concerning authorization and the boundaries of recovery units.
View Updatability: Any view that can be defined using combinations of base tables that are in theory updatable must be capable of being updated by the database management system.
Update and delete: Any operand that describes the results of a single retrieval operation must be capable of being applied to an update or delete operation as well.
Physical Data Independence: Changes that are made to physical storage representation access methods must not require changes to be made to application programs.
Logical Data Independence: Changes made to tables that do not modify any data stored in the tables must not require changes to be made to application programs.
Integrity Constraints: Constraints that apply to entity integrity and referential integrity must be specifiable by the data language implemented by the database management system and not by statements coded into application programs.
Database Distribution: The data language implemented by the database management system must support the ability to distribute the database without requiring changes to be made to application programs. This facility must be provided in the data language whether or not the database management system itself supports distributed database.
Non subversion: If the database management system supports facilities that allow application programs to operate on the tables a row at a time, an application program using this type of database access must be prevented from bypassing entity integrity or referential integrity constraints that are defined for the database.
