The "relational" in relational databases is not about department number in employees referencing departments.
What the model calls relations are sets of n-tuples where each attribute value has a domain.
SQL databases call their version of relations tables, and, in that view, a database with a single table is still relational.
Now I don't think SQL databases are relational but the analogy still holds (I'd just say that a relational database can have just a single relation)
If you meant it this way and I misunderstood you, apologies, though I'm not sure I'd say most data is actually inherently relational (even though I do think the relational model is the best one we have so far for databases).
However, if you meant that most data has relationships (as the ones we enforce with foreign keys in sql databases) then I agree with you, and I think using database management systems that don't have good support for representing this type of relationships between data entities will only work in niche cases and will eventually cause more trouble than benefits in general-purpose use cases.
What the model calls relations are sets of n-tuples where each attribute value has a domain.
SQL databases call their version of relations tables, and, in that view, a database with a single table is still relational.
Now I don't think SQL databases are relational but the analogy still holds (I'd just say that a relational database can have just a single relation)
If you meant it this way and I misunderstood you, apologies, though I'm not sure I'd say most data is actually inherently relational (even though I do think the relational model is the best one we have so far for databases).
However, if you meant that most data has relationships (as the ones we enforce with foreign keys in sql databases) then I agree with you, and I think using database management systems that don't have good support for representing this type of relationships between data entities will only work in niche cases and will eventually cause more trouble than benefits in general-purpose use cases.