Record Detail Back
Database Systems
- Share to:
Today, we take for granted the benefits brought to us by relational databases: the ability
to store, access, and change data quickly and easily on low-cost computers.Yet, until the
late 1970s, databases stored large amounts of data in a hierarchical structure that was
difficult to navigate and inflexible. Programmers needed to know what clients wanted to
do with the data before the database was designed.Adding or changing the way the data
was analyzed was a time-consuming and expensive process. As a result, you searched
through huge card catalogs to find a library book, you used road maps that didn’t show
changes made in the last year, and you had to buy a newspaper to find information on
stock prices.
In 1970, Edgar “Ted” Codd, a mathematician employed by IBM, wrote an article that
would change all that. At the time, nobody realized that Codd’s obscure theories would
spark a technological revolution on par with the development of personal computers and
the Internet. Don Chamberlin, coinventor of SQL, the most popular computer language
used by database systems today, explains, “There was this guy Ted Codd who had some
kind of strange mathematical notation, but nobody took it very seriously.” ThenTed Codd
organized a symposium, and Chamberlin listened as Codd reduced complicated five-page
programs to one line. “And I said, ‘Wow,’” Chamberlin recalls.
The symposium convinced IBM to fund System R, a research project that built a
prototype of a relational database and that would eventually lead to the creation of SQL
and DB2. IBM, however, kept System R on the back burner for a number of crucial years.
The company had a vested interest in IMS, a reliable, high-end database system that had
come out in 1968. Unaware of the market potential of this research, IBM allowed its staff
to publish these papers publicly.
Among those reading these papers was Larry Ellison, who had just founded a small
company. Recruiting programmers from System R and the University of California, Ellison
was able to market the first SQL-based relational database in 1979, well before IBM. By
1983, the company had released a portable version of the database, grossed over
$5,000,000 annually, and changed its name to Oracle. Spurred on by competition, IBM
finally released SQL/DS, its first relational database, in 1980.
IBM has yet to catch up. By 2007, global sales of relational database management systems
rose to $18.8 billion. Oracle captured 48.6% of the market share, more than its two
closest competitors, IBM and Microsoft, combined
CARLOS CORONEL • STEVEN MORRIS • PETER ROB - Personal Name
9th Edition
10: 0-538-74884-2
NONE
Database Systems
Management
English
South-Western Cengage Learning
2011
USA
1-724
LOADING LIST...
LOADING LIST...