Which data management approach utilizes tables to define relationships among data entities?

The relational database management system (RDBMS) is designed to store data in tables, known as relations, where each table consists of rows and columns. This structure allows for the organization of data in a way that is easily understandable and manageable. The relationships among different data entities are established through the use of keys—primary keys in one table can relate to foreign keys in another, enabling the implementation of various types of relationships, such as one-to-many and many-to-many.

This approach is advantageous because it promotes data integrity, reduces redundancy, and can easily accommodate complex queries through the use of a structured query language (SQL). The tabular format makes it straightforward to perform operations such as data retrieval, updating, and reporting.

In contrast, other data management approaches like hierarchical, object-oriented, and network DBMS utilize different structures that do not inherently rely on tables to define relationships. For instance, hierarchical DBMS organizes data in a tree-like structure, network DBMS employs a graph structure for relationships, and object-oriented DBMS uses objects and classes to represent data, which makes them less flexible for certain types of queries compared to a relational model.