Normalization: A Workshop for Everybody Pt. 1

Postgresql East 2010

Philadephia, PA

Databases – A Historical Perspective

WHO AM I?

Brent FriedmanSenior Solutions Consultant

Cincom Systems, [email protected]


What is a database?


The earliest computers weren’t sufficiently complex to entertain the idea of a free-standing database. Data was directly linked with the application in memory at the time.


TIMELINE: 1950s

DATABASE – NETWORK MODEL

CODASYL

References to data are through low-level pointers. Adding or changing a database required considerable reworking of the storage mechanism.


TIMELINE: 1960s

DATABASE – HIERARCHICAL MODEL

IBM’s IMS

These databases allow only 1:1 or 1:many relationships. Such databases can be incredibly fast, but are not well suited to hold disparate types of information.


TIMELINE: 1960s

Name a hierarchical database system that is still in everyday use around the world.

Hint: What contact information about people do YOU store right now?


DATABASE TRIVIA

Around 1964, the term "data base" was "coined by workers in military information systems to denote collections of data shared by end-users of time sharing computer systems." In earlier days, each application had its own "master files" of data, so the concept of a data collection that could be shared by multiple applications was a new idea in efficiency.

http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog/2005/12/25-years-of-database-history-s-1.html


TIMELINE: 1964


http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt4.htm

TIMELINE: 1967


The term “memory bank” enters, and soon (thankfully) leaves, the English language.

1969…

Was not just about the counter-culture. But things

were about to happen…


TIMELINE: 1970

Edgar F. Codd, commonly cited as E. F. Codd, published a paper on something he called “Relational Database Theory”


http://www.ibiblio.org/jelkner/IntroToIT/database_lesson.html

Codd, continued

Codd’s revolutionary idea did not focus on the relational algebra, but rather on how

the data should be addressed. His theory separated the schema from the storage

mechanism.


RDBMS – What’s that?

A relational database management system is ultimately based on E. F.

Codd’s theories.


TIMELINE – 1970sRDBMS – Path 1

The Ingres Group:Ingres; Sybase; MS Sql Server; and

something called Postgres…

These used the QUEL language


TIMELINE – 1970sRDBMS – Path 2

The (IBM) System R Group:DB2; Oracle; Nonstop SQL

These used the SQL language


TIMELINE - 1976

Peter Chen proposed the Entity-Relationship diagram

(ERD), which is still sometimes called a “Chen

diagram”


ERD – Chen Diagram

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-relationship_model


ERDs and so on

There are a multitude of design practices, modelling

tools, and even variations on how to diagram relational

data.


To avoid tomato throwing, insinuations about lineage,

and general bodily harm, we will avoid a direct discussion of specific schools of thought in the area of relational data

representation.


If you really need a hint…

Database Design Studio

Lite or Pro versions

www.chillisource.com


http://www.thespeciousreport.com/2006/06060222comedy.html

database design tool

TIMELINE – 1980s

The QUEL branch of RDBMS suffers a horrible boating accident, and is not heard

from again.


TIMELINE – 1980s

SQLStructured Query Language

becomes the de facto standard among all relational

database products.


SQL – The Real Image


TIMELINE – mid 1980s

The rise of the personal computer (PC) issues in a host

of new ‘personal’ relational databases:

Paradox; Dbase III; RBASE; etc.


TIMELINE – early 1990s

The trend toward 4GL (4th generation languages) leads

to visual front-ends for personal databases:Powerbuilder; Oracle

Developer;and even early MS VB


TIMELINE - 1990

Some geek named Tim Berners-Lee, or “Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE,

FRS, FREng, FRSA” for all you Brits, proposed mating

hypertext with the early Internet.


TIMELINE – mid 1990s

This “World Wide Web” thing really catches on, once Al

Gore let everybody know they could do something with their

dial-up modems besides playing DECWar at the local

university.


TIMELINE – late 1990s

Relational databases become so ubiquitous that even your mother knows what “DBA”

means.


TIMELINE – 1995ish

Graduate students Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen revise

Postgres’s query language, POSTQUEL, to use SQL, and

call it Postgres95…

http://www.postgresql.org/about/history


TIMELINE – 2000s

Object databases, although they have been around for a while, start to get noticed by

non-geeks.


The role of object databases in “SKYNET” has not yet been

determined…


TIMELINE – 2005

Columnar databases find a growing audience in the “need for speed” crowd.

While probably still a niche segment, products such as

Monet are increasing in popularity.


TIMELINE -2008

Sun Microsystems acquires MySQL


TIMELINE – 2009

The rise of distributed systems inspires the NoSQL movement – rejection of traditional RDBMS systems for distributed data structures, such as Apache

Hadoop


TIMELINE – 2010

Will cloud computing gain ground on traditional IT infrastructure

models?


Questions?

Comments?


END OF

PART ONE


Normalization: A Workshop for Everybody Pt. 1

Documents

historical perspective

personal databases

model databases

s relational databases

pa databases

address databases

database trivia databases

sql language databases