It is the difference between the relational model and the in-memory data structures. The relational data model organizes data into a structure of tables and rows, or more properly, relations and tuples. In the relational model, a tuple is a set of name-value pairs and a relation is a set of tuples. All operations in SQL consume and return relations, which leads to the mathematically elegant relational algebra.

This foundation on relations provides a certain elegance and simplicity, but it also introduces limitations. In particular, the values in a relational tuple have to be simple—they cannot contain any structure, such as a nested record or a list. This limitation isn’t true for in-memory data structures, which can take on much richer structures than relations. As a result, if you want to use a richer in-memory data structure, you have to translate it to a relational representation to store it on disk. Hence the impedance mismatch—two different representations that require translation