This document discusses relational algebra, which provides a formal foundation for the relational model of databases. It describes several key relational algebra operations including selection, projection, join, union, intersection, difference, and cartesian product. Selection allows retrieving rows that satisfy a given condition. Projection selects certain columns. Join combines related tuples from two relations. Set operations like union, intersection, and difference are also covered. The document provides examples to illustrate how each operation works and can be used to solve retrieval queries. Relational algebra operations form the basis for implementing and optimizing queries in relational database management systems.