Table Versus Relation

People sometimes making scathing comments about how wrong it is to say "table" when one should say "relation".

ChrisDate, in AnIntroductionToDatabaseSystems, 7th ed, pg 125, says that in informal contexts it is usual and perfectly acceptable to say they are the same thing (and much of his book to that point does so).

On the other hand, if precision is needed, it's true there's a difference. A relation is an abstract entity, while a table is a concrete diagram or implementation of a relation, and has certain concrete properties (such as left-to-right ordering of tuple elements and top-to-bottom ordering of rows) that relations do not.

So the question is whether precision is needed to avoid miscommunication, not whether one is simply incorrect usage.

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