Database in Depth

Foreword

I remember clearly the first time I didn't buy a book by Chris Date. That's right, I said "didn't buy." It was late 1991 or early 1992. I was in a small bookstore in the Saginaw, Michigan mall, looking for a book on SQL. I found one, too, by some guy named C. J. Date, whom I'd never heard of. The book looked good, the writing was clear, half of me wanted to buy it, but . . . oh, the price! I stood there holding a book in my hands that was about 1/4-inch thick, had less than 200 pages, yet it cost $30--a lot for me back in those days. I struggled with myself for a bit, then, reluctantly, I put the book back on the shelf and walked away.

What a mistake! A career was in the balance—I just didn't know it at the time.

I redeemed myself, though, by convincing my boss that the company should buy the book for me. It took them a month to get around to ordering the book, but it finally arrived, and I read it, not once, but several times. One of the best and most educational parts of the book (for me) was an appendix with Chris's critique of the then-current SQL language.

I learned a lot from Chris, from that book. I became enamored of working with databases, and fascinated by the idea of a declarative language like SQL: I could just describe the results I was after, and the database engine would do the work of deriving those results for me. I also learned more about Chris, and about his role working with Codd from almost the very beginning of the relational era. For several years I ...