Record
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
A record is just another word for a row. Developers love having five words for the same thing to keep you on your toes. One record = one row = one entry in a table. Same thing.
Real Talk
A record is a synonym for a row in a relational database — a complete set of related fields representing a single entity instance. The term 'record' is more commonly used in older database systems and in non-SQL contexts like file-based databases.
When You'll Hear This
"We found a matching record in the database." / "The record was deleted successfully."
Related Terms
Field
A field is the intersection of a row and a column — the actual single value stored there. If the 'email' column for user #5 says 'alex@example.
Row
A row is one single record in a table. If your users table has 500 users, it has 500 rows.
Table
A database table is exactly like a spreadsheet tab. It has columns across the top (name, email, age) and rows going down (one per person).