Don Chamberlin, co-inventor of SQL and a pivotal figure in relational database technology, shares fascinating insights from his illustrious career at IBM. He recounts the early days of database management systems and their evolution, inspired by Ted Codd's revolutionary ideas. Chamberlin dives into the creation of SQL, its introduction at a pivotal conference, and how it transformed data accessibility. He also discusses the rise of its standardization and ongoing relevance, making SQL a cornerstone in today’s data landscape.
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System R Project
System R, an industrial-strength relational system, was developed by IBM Research in San Jose.
Don Chamberlin joined the project, which proved to be a pivotal opportunity in his career.
insights INSIGHT
SQL's Design Goals
SQL aimed to be user-friendly, using tables instead of relations and plain English words.
A key goal was the "walk-up and read" property, allowing users to understand queries intuitively.
question_answer ANECDOTE
SQL's Public Debut
The first SQL paper was published at the SIGFIDET (now SIGMOD) conference in 1974.
A debate between Ted Codd and Charles Bachman positioned the relational approach as the new mainstream.
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Over the past 199 episodes of DataFramed, we’ve heard from people at the forefront of data and AI, and over the past year we’ve constantly looked ahead to the future AI might bring. But all of the technologies and ways of working we’ve witnessed have been built on foundations that were laid decades ago. For our 200th episode, we’re bringing you a special guest and taking a walk down memory lane—to the creation and development of one of the most popular programming languages in the world.
Don Chamberlin is renowned as the co-inventor of SQL (Structured Query Language), the predominant database language globally, which he developed with Raymond Boyce in the mid-1970s. Chamberlin's professional career began at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York, following a summer internship there during his academic years. His work on IBM's System R project led to the first SQL implementation and significantly advanced IBM’s relational database technology. His contributions were recognized when he was made an IBM Fellow in 2003 and later a Fellow of the Computer History Museum in 2009 for his pioneering work on SQL and database architectures. Chamberlin also contributed to the development of XQuery, an XML query language, as part of the W3C, which became a W3C Recommendation in January 2007. Additionally, he holds fellowships with ACM and IEEE and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
In the episode, Richie and Don explore his early career at IBM and the development of his interest in databases alongside Ray Boyce, the database task group (DBTG), the transition to relational databases and the early development of SQL, the commercialization and adoption of SQL, how it became standardized, how it evolved and spread via open source, the future of SQL through NoSQL and SQL++ and much more.
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