Relational databases (RDBMS) are based on a logical model of information structured as tables. Within a table each instance of information is represented by a row while each element of the information is captured in a column. At the physical level there are many different strategies for storing the information on disk, each with different space / time tradeoffs. Fortunately, the physical implementation details are hidden from the user just as NetKernel's resource oriented computing model supports a logical view of information and hides the physical level details.

Because of the similarities in the logical view of information supported by an NetKernel and an RDBMS the mapping of one information model to the other is simple and straight forward. When NetKernel transfers transfers tabular data from an RDBMS it uses the XML Resource Model as the internal logical information type. Specifically this means that the result of issuing a query to a RDBMS is an XML document. Once in XML the full set of tools and services of the XML resource model are available to process and format the information.

NetKernel provides support for relational databases (RDBMS) with the mod-dbms module.