The rental table
This article introduces the structure of the rental table in the Sakila database.
The rental table contains a row for each rental of each inventory item, which contains information about who rented what, when it rented it, and when it was returned.
The rental table defines foreign keys that refers to the inventory, customer and staff tables.
The payment table refers to the rental using a foreign key.
Table Structure
The structure of the rental table is as follows:
+--------------+--------------------+------+-----+-------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------------+--------------------+------+-----+-------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| rental_id | int | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| rental_date | datetime | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| inventory_id | mediumint unsigned | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| customer_id | smallint unsigned | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| return_date | datetime | YES | | NULL | |
| staff_id | tinyint unsigned | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| last_update | timestamp | NO | | CURRENT_TIMESTAMP | DEFAULT_GENERATED on update CURRENT_TIMESTAMP |
+--------------+--------------------+------+-----+-------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
Table Columns
The following table explains all columns in the rental table.
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
rental_id |
The surrogate primary key that uniquely identifies the lease. |
rental_date |
The date and time the item was rented. |
inventory_id |
Items being rented. |
customer_id |
Customers who rent items. |
return_date |
The date and time the item was returned. |
staff_id |
The staff handling the lease. |
last_update |
The time when the row was created or last updated. |