What do these sets mean? Relational Algebra

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I'm in a databases class and this homework is due next week. I have been home sick for a couple days so I can't go to class to ask this question right now and I'd hate to waste time, so hopefully someone can help me out on here.

I'm a little confused, this is problem #1:

Problem1 [15′ = 5′ ∗ 3]

Given the following relations $R$ and $S$, where $R(A,B,C) =((x,y,z); (j,g,s);(y,x,g); (q,w,e))$ and $S(B,C,D) = ((g,s,r); (y,x,g); (r,q,e))$ compute the following operations:

  1. Cartesian product: $R\times $S;

  2. Natural join: $R \bowtie S$;

  3. Equal join: $R \bowtie R.B=S.B S$

First: Is there a significance to the [15' = 5' * 3] next to the problem number? each problem has something like that and I'm not sure what's going on or if my teach is being silly.

Second: What is with the $(A,B,C)$ behind $R$? does it relate to the sets on the right side of the equal sign? I took discrete math and I feel confident I can do this work easily enough, but I have a feeling I'm missing out on some key concepts.

If I'm totally wasting time and it'd be too much to try to explain, could someone point me in the direction of a solid tutorial that can explain how this format works? I've been reading the textbook diligently, but the lectures haven't been following the book content very closely it seems.

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The notation is a bit non-standard, so let me try to formulate it in a more standard way. We have four sets $A, B, C, D$, and two relations $R$ and $S$. $R$ is a relation on $A \times B \times C$ and $S$ is a relation on $B \times C \times D$. We are then told that $R$ and $S$ are given as follows.

$$R = \{(x,y,z),(j,g,s),(y,x,g),(q,w,e)\}$$ $$S = \{(g,s,r),(y,x,g),(r,q,e)\}$$

Next we are told to find the

  1. Cartesian product of $R$ and $S$,

  2. natural join of $R$ and $S$,

  3. equal join of $R$ and $S$.

Do you know how to do 1-3?