The best way to describe a Navigational DBMS is through that of a tree. Each value was associated with another through the use of a parent, most of the time with no other direct way to access the data. Relational Databases on the other hand use values common to multiple tables to establish a unique key — making sure that they are talking on the same page so that there are many, many ways to get to the same place. To put it another way, if you were trying to get from point A to point B, a navigational database would have one specific path to get there — via a freeway. A relational database on the other hand would have options for taking the freeway, a back road, a boat, a plane, a bus and sometimes a rocket — provided that each of those methods were set up correctly to talk to each other. Most modern databases use the relational database model.