Codd’s Relational Vision – Has NoSQL Come Full Circle? by Doug Turnbull.
From the post:
Recently, I spoke at NoSQL Matters in Barcelona about database history. As somebody with a history background, I was pretty excited to dig into the past, beyond the hype and marketing fluff, and look specifically at what technical problems each generation of database solved and where they in-turn fell short.
However, I got stuck at one moment in time I found utterly fascinating: the original development of relational databases. So much of the NoSQL movement feels like a rebellion against the “old timey” feeling relational databases. So I thought it would be fascinating to be a contrarian, to dig into what value relational databases have added to the world. Something everyone thinks is obvious but nobody really understands.
It’s very easy and popular to criticize relational databases. What folks don’t seem to do is go back and appreciate how revolutionary relational databases were when they came out. We forget what problems they solved. We forget how earlier databases fell short, and how relational databases solved the problems of the first generation of databases. In short, relational databases were the noSomething, and I aimed to find out what that something was.
And from that apply those lessons to today’s NoSQL databases. Are today’s databases repeating mistakes of the past? Or are they filling an important niche (or both?).
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This is a must read article if you are not choosing databases based on marketing hype.
It’s nice to hear IT history taken seriously.