Oracle SQL: the Essential Reference

SQL: A Success Story

The unparalleled success of relational database technology and the SQL language is one of the great achievements of the IT industry. A number of factors have contributed to that success.

The strong foundation of SQL as a non-procedural data access language, and its relational theoretical underpinnings, have proven to be a powerful starting point, despite the evolution of SQL beyond those beginnings. Improvements in hardware and software technology have overcome the initial concerns about performance of relational databases. The high-level nature of the SQL interface has turned out to be particularly suitable to parallelism for data warehousing and to programmatic database extensions needed in client/server and Internet environments. SQL and relational databases have been a critical success factor for a wide range of customer applications, from the simplest department application to mission-critical transaction processing systems and enormous data warehouses that support business intelligence. Responding to competitive pressure, database vendors have continually innovated and extended their SQL implementations, at the same time being forced by the market to conform to and contribute to the standards process. The standards process has given SQL legitimacy and a roadmap for further development. SQL has proven its ability to adapt to changing market requirements, such as the rise of give a sense ofdata warehousing and new technologies like objects, Java, and XML. ...