Parent of relational database-Edgar Cauter __ Database

in the history of the development of database technology, 1970 is a year of great transition. in June of this year, Edgar Cauter (Edgar Frank Codd), a senior researcher at the IBM San Jose Research Laboratory, published a "relational model for large shared database data" on communications of ACM.

ACM later listed this paper as one of the most landmark 2 5 papers in the 25 years since 1958 , because it first explicitly and clearly presented a new model for the database system, the relational model.

"Relation" (relation) is a basic concept in mathematics , which is represented by some ordered pairs of elements in a set to reflect the relationship between objective things . such as the size of the relationship between people, the relationship between persons, the purchase and sale of commodities in the relations and so on.

In nature and society, relationships are everywhere; in computer science, the concept of relationship is also of great significance. The concept of relationship is applied in computer logic design, compiler programming, algorithm analysis and program structure, information retrieval and so on. It is the first person to use the concept of relationship to establish a data model to describe, design and manipulate the database . (original link)

Since the relationship model is simple and has a solid mathematical foundation, it has aroused the wide attention of academia and industry immediately, and has produced a strong impact on the database technology from both theory and practice. after the relationship model was proposed, the previous database products based on hierarchical model and mesh model quickly went into decay and disappeared , and a large number of commercial relational database systems were quickly developed and quickly occupied the market. The speed of its alternation, the Bubur is completely rare in the history of software. Based on the remarkable phenomenon of the late 70 to the early 80, the1981 Turing Award was naturally grantedto the father of the relational database. In his acceptance of the Turing Prize, he made a speech entitled "Relational database: A practical basis for improving productivity". (published in February 1982, Communications of ACM 109th to 117th, or see "A C M Turing Award speech Set" 3rd 9 1 to 4th 1 0 pages. ）

The court was British, 1 9 2 3 years August 1 9th born in central England's port city of Portland. After the outbreak of World War II, young colt enlisted in the Royal Air Force, 1 9 4 2 to 1 9 4 years, the captain, participated in many major air combat, for the anti-fascist War made a contribution. After the end of World War II, he studied mathematics at Oxford University and went to the United States to pursue development after obtaining a bachelor's degree in 1 9 4 8 years. He has worked in the United States and Canada, participated in the I B M first scientific computer 7 0 1 as well as the first large transistor computer S t R E t C H of the logical design, presided over the first multi-channel program design capabilities of the development of operating systems. He was conscious of the lack of hardware knowledge, so at the beginning of the 6 0, he went to the University of Michigan to study computer and communications (at the time he was nearly 4 0) and received a master's degree in 1 9 6 3 years, and a Ph. D. in 1 9 6 years. This makes his theory foundation more solid, the specialized knowledge is richer. With the accumulation of his more than 10 years of experience, he finally burst into a flash of wisdom in 1 9 7 0 years, opening a new era for database technology.

Since database is the basis of all kinds of computer applications, the relationship model not only lays a foundation for the development of database technology, but also becomes a great impetus for popularizing the application of computer. After the introduction of the relationship model, IBM invested heavily in the research of relational database management system, the research results of its "system R" project have greatly promoted the development of relational database technology, on the basis of which DB2 and SQL products have become the mainstream products of IBM. System R itself was not available as a prototype, but in view of its impact,ACM granted the 1988 Software System award to the System R development team (6 of the winners included 1 9 9 8 year Turing Award winner J.gray). This year's software system award also made an exception to two software, and another winning software is the relational database management system, known as Ingres .

After 1970, the colt continued to work on perfecting and developing the relationship theory. In the 1972, he proposed the concept of relational algebra and relational calculus, which defined the basic operations of the relationship, such as intersection, projection, selection, and connection, and laid the foundation for the later standard Structured Query Language (SQL).

He also founded a research institute (the Institute of Relations) and a company (Codd & Associations), a database technology consultant for many domestic and foreign companies. 1 9 9 0 years, he wrote and published a monograph on the relational Model of database management: The second edition, which summed up his decades of theoretical exploration and practical experience.

                                                                                --is excerpted from the "Programmer" magazine