[FOSS_health] Open Source - Article Watch Contd...

[Tim C]

On 02/06/07, Adrian Midgley <amidgley2 at defoam.net> wrote:
>
> Tim Churches wrote:
> > If I were going to choose a 1970 database technology, I'd go for PICK
> > for elegance, but MUMPS does seem to work
> Many people who choose a 1970 database technology select an rdbms using
> SQL.
>
> It isn't new.  er
>
> "Dr. E.F. Codd, an IBM researcher, first developed the relational data
> model in 1970. In 1985, Dr. Codd published a list of 12 rules that
> concisely define an ideal relational database, which have provided a
> guideline for the design of all relational database systems ever since. "


Yes, but relational DBMSes didn't become popular and widely deployed until
the 1980s, and databases which conformed to a standard SQL interface not
until the late 1980s, whereas things like network and hierarchical
databases, and MUMPS and PICK were very popular and widely used much earlier
than that. But in many ways, MUMPS and PICK have a lot in common with XML
and object data bases, which are a lot more modern than relational systems.
But modernism isn't everything - it is not, per se, good. What is good is
what works well in practice.

Tim Churches
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