Chris Date – författare

Fifty years of relational. Its hard to believe the relational model has been around now for over half a century! But it has -- it was born on 19 August 1969, when Codds first database paper was published. And Chris Date has been involved with it for almost the whole of that time, working closely with Codd for many years and publishing the very first, and definitive, book on the subject in 1975. In this books title essay, Chris offers his own unique perspective (two chapters) on those fifty years. No database professional can afford to miss this one of a kind history. But theres more to this book than just a little personal history. Another unique feature is an extensive and in depth discussion (nine chapters) of a variety of frequently asked questions on relational matters, covering such topics as mathematics and the relational model; relational algebra; predicates; relation valued attributes; keys and normalization; missing information; and the SQL language. Another part of the book offers detailed responses to critics (four chapters). Finally, the book also contains the text of several recent interviews with Chris Date, covering such matters as RM/V2, XML, NoSQL, The Third Manifesto, and how SQL came to dominate the database landscape.

This book is a revised, upgraded, and hugely improved version of an earlier one called Logic and Databases. Although its effectively a brand new book, therefore, the following remarks from that earlier book are still relevant here. First, logic and databases are inextricably intertwined. The relational model itself is essentially just elementary logic, tailored to database needs. Now, if youre a database professional, this wont be news to you -- but you still might not realize just how much everything we do in the database world is (or should be!) affected by logic. Logic is fundamental, and everywhere. As a database professional, therefore, you owe it to yourself to understand the basics of formal logic, and you ought to be able to explain (and perhaps defend) the connections between formal logic and database technology. And thats what this book is about. What it does is show, through a series of partly independent, partly interrelated essays, just how various crucial aspects of database technology -- some of them very familiar, others maybe less so -- are solidly grounded in formal logic. Overall, the goal is to help you realize the importance of logic in everything you do, and also, I hope, to help you see that logic can be fun.