The data in Babase are stored in tables. Tables can be visualized as grids, with rows and columns. Each row represents a single real-world thing or event, an entity, e.g. a baboon. Each cell in the row contains a single unit of information, e.g. a birth date, a name, and a sex. The row holds the entirety of the information belonging to the entity as an isolated thing, e.g. baboon database entities consist of a birth date, a name, and a sex. Each column contains one and only one kind of information, e.g. birth date.

Table 2.1 is an example of a database table that might be used to represent baboons, one baboon per row. Notice that each cell contains one and exactly one unit of information.

Anyone working with Babase will require a familiarity with the database's tables. An understanding of the entity each row represents is critical when working with a table. The remainder of this section provides short definitions of the entities each table holds in its rows.

Some of the tables in Babase exist to define a vocabulary. These are the support tables. For lack of a better term, the remainder of the tables are labeled “main tables” in Table 2.2.

The significant aspects of the the support tables are: the Id column -- the name of the column holding the vocabulary term, which columns of which tables use the vocabulary, and what sort of vocabulary the table defines. Table 2.3 summarizes this information.