Appendix. Historical Antecedents
In the beginning, there were data files … and from the need to manage the data stored in those files arose a variety of data management methods, most of which preceded the relational data model and, because of their shortcomings, paved the way for the acceptance of relational databases.
This appendix provides an overview of data management organizations used prior to the introduction of the relational data model. Although you do not need to read this appendix to understand the main body of this book, some of the concepts discussed here were introduced in the case studies in Part III.
File Processing Systems
The first commercial computer—ENIAC—was designed to help process the 1960 Census. Its designers thought that ...
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