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Relational Databases
Doctor Edgar F. Codd
Edgar F. Codd, a mathematician and computer scientist who laid the theoretical foundation for relational datatabases, the standard method by which information is organized in and retrieved from computers, died on Friday at his home in Williams Island, Fla. He was 79. 
The cause was heart failure, said his wife, Sharon B. Codd. Computers can store vast amounts of
data. But before Dr. Codd's work found its way into commercial products, electronic databases
were "completely adhoc and higgledy-piggledy," said Chris Date, a database expert and former
business partner of Dr. Codd's, who was known as Ted.
Dr. Codd's idea, based on mathematical set theory, was to store data in cross-referenced tables, allowing the information to be presented in multiple permutations. For instance, a user could ask the computer for a list of all baseball players from both the National League and the American League with batting averages over .300. Relational databases now lie at the heart of systems ranging from hospitals' patient records to airline flights and schedules. While working as a researcher at the I.B.M. San Jose Research Laboratory in the 1960's and 70's, Dr. Codd wrote several papers outlining his ideas. To his frustration, I.B.M. largely ignored his work, as the company was investing heavily at the time in commercializing a different type of database system. "His approach was not, shall we say, welcomed with open arms at I.B.M.," said Harwood Kolsky, a physicist who worked with Dr. Codd at I.B.M. in the 1950's and 60's. "It was a revolutionary approach." It was not until 1978 that Frank T. Cary, then chairman and chief executive of I.B.M., ordered the company to build a product based on Dr. Codd's ideas. But I.B.M. was beaten to the market by Lawrence J. Ellison, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who used Dr. Codd's papers as the basis of a product around which he built a start-up company that has since become the Oracle Corporation. "The sad thing is that Ted never became rich out of his idea," Mr. Date said. "Other people did, but not Ted." Edgar Frank Codd was born the youngest of seven children in Portland Bill, in Dorset, England, in 1923. His father was a leather manufacturer, his mother a schoolteacher. He attended Oxford University on a full scholarship, studying mathematics and chemistry. During World War II, he was a pilot with the Royal Air Force. In 1948 he moved to New York and, hearing that I.B.M. was hiring mathematicians, obtained a job there as a researcher. A few years later, in 1953, angered by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's pursuit of Americans he said had Communist ties or sympathies, Dr. Codd moved to Ottawa for several years. After returning to the United States, he began graduate studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he received his doctorate in computer science in 1965. In 1967, he moved to California to work in the I.B.M. San Jose Research Laboratory. He and his first wife, Elizabeth, were divorced in 1978. In 1990, Dr. Codd married Sharon Weinberg, a mathematician and I.B.M. colleague. In 1981, he received the A. M. Turing Award, the highest honor in the computer science field. Dr. Codd is survived by his wife, of Williams Island; a daughter, Katherine Codd Clark of Palo Alto, Calif.; three sons, Ronald, of Alamo, Calif., Frank, of Castro Valley, Calif., and David, of Boca Raton, Fla.; and six grandchildren. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
Professor Edsger Wybe Dijkstra
Professor Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, a noted pioneer of the science and industry of computing, died after a long struggle with cancer on 6 August 2002 at his home in Nuenen, the Netherlands. Dijkstra was born in 1930 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, the son of a chemist father and a mathematician mother. He graduated from the Gymnasium Erasmianum in Rotterdam and obtained degrees in mathematics and theoretical physics from the University of Leyden and a Ph.D. in computing science from the University of Amsterdam. He worked as a programmer at the Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, 1952-62; was professor of mathematics, Eindhoven University of Technology, 1962-1984; and was a Burroughs Corporation research fellow, 1973-1984. He held the 
Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computing Sciences at the University of Texas
at Austin, 1984-1999, and retired as Professor Emeritus in 1999.
Dijkstra is survived by his wife of over forty years, Maria (Ria) C. Dijkstra Debets, by three children, Marcus J., Femke E., and computer scientist Rutger M. Dijkstra, and by two grandchildren. Dijkstra was the 1972 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, often viewed as the Nobel Prize for computing. He was a member of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. He received the 1974 AFIPS Harry Goode Award, the 1982 IEEE Computer Pioneer Award, and the 1989 ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education. Athens University of Economics awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2001. In 2002, the C&C Foundation of Japan recognized Dijkstra "for his pioneering contributions to the establishment of the scientific basis for computer software through creative research in basic software theory, algorithm theory, structured programming, and semaphores". Dijkstra is renowned for the insight that mathematical logic is and must be the basis for sensible computer program construction and for his contributions to mathematical methodology. He is responsible for the idea of building operating systems as explicitly synchronized sequential processes, for the formal development of computer programs, and for the intellectual foundations for the disciplined control of nondeterminacy. He is well known for his amazingly efficient shortest path algorithm and for having designed and coded the first Algol 60 compiler. He was famously the leader in the abolition of the GOTO statement from programming. Dijkstra was a prodigious writer. His entire collection of over thirteen hundred written works was digitally scanned and is accessible at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD. He also corresponded regularly with hundreds of friends and colleagues over the years --not by email but by conventional post. He strenuously preferred the fountain pen to the computer in producing his scholarly output and letters. Dijkstra was notorious for his wit, eloquence, and way with words, such as in his remark "The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim"; his advice to a promising researcher, who asked how to select a topic for research: "Do only what only you can do"; and his remark in his Turing Award lecture "In their capacity as a tool, computers will be but a ripple on the surface of our culture. In their capacity as intellectual challenge, they are without precedent in the cultural history of mankind." Dijkstra enriched the language of computing with many concepts and phrases, such as structured programming, separation of concerns, synchronization, deadly embrace, dining philosophers, weakest precondition, guarded command, the excluded miracle, and the famous "semaphores" for controlling computer processes. The Oxford English Dictionary cites his use of the words "vector" and "stack" in a computing context. Dijkstra enjoyed playing Mozart for his friends on his Boesendorfer piano. He and his wife had a fondness for exploring state and national parks in their Volkswagen bus, dubbed the Touring Machine, in which he wrote many technical papers. Throughout his scientific career, Dijkstra formulated and pursued the highest academic ideals of scientific rigour untainted by commercial, managerial, or political considerations. Simplicity, beauty, and eloquence were his hallmarks, and his uncompromising insistence on elegance in programming and mathematics was an inspiration to thousands. He judged his own work by the highest standards and set a continuing challenge to his many friends to do the same. For the rest, he willingly undertook the role of Socrates, that of a gadfly to society, repeatedly goading his native and his adoptive country by remarking on the mistakes inherent in fashionable ideas and the dangers of time-serving compromises. Like Socrates, his most significant legacy is to those who engaged with him in small group discussions or scientific correspondence about half-formulated ideas and emerging discoveries. Particularly privileged are those who attended his reading groups in Eindhoven and Austin, known as the "Tuesday Afternoon Clubs". At Dijkstra's passage, let us recall Phaedo's parting remark about Socrates: "we may truly say that of all the men of his time whom we have known, he was the wisest and justest and best."
Professor Joe Celko
Joe Celko is Professor and VP of Relational Database Management Systems at Northface University. 
Joe is one of the most widely read SQL authors in the world. He has hundreds of articles and columns in the computer trade and academic press to his credit, including a highly popular series of SQL puzzles and his current column "Celko" in Intelligent Enterprise magazine. He was the winner of the DBMS Magazine Reader's Choice Award four consecutive years. He is the author of five books:
Joe received his B.S. and M.S. in Mathematics from Georgia State University. Email: joe.celko@northface.edu
Fabian Pascal
Fabian Pascal has a national and international reputation as an independent technology analyst, consultant, author and lecturer specializing in data management. 
He was affiliated with Codd & Date and for 20 years held various analytical and management positions
in the private and public sectors, has taught and lectured at the business and academic levels,
and advised vendor and user organizations on data management technology, strategy and implementation.
Clients include IBM, Census Bureau, CIA, Apple, Borland, Cognos, UCSF, and IRS. He is founder, editor and publisher of DATABASE DEBUNKING, a web site dedicated to dispelling persistent fallacies, flaws, myths and misconceptions prevalent in the IT industry. Together with Chris Date he has recently launched the DATABASE FOUNDATIONS SERIES of papers. Author of three books, he has published extensively in most trade publications, including DM Review, Database Programming and Design, DBMS, Byte, Infoworld and Computerworld. He is author of the contrarian columns Against the Grain, Setting Matters Straight, and for The Journal of Conceptual Modeling. His third book, PRACTICAL ISSUES IN DATABASE MANAGEMENT serves as text for his seminars.
Chris Date
As one of the world's best-known specialists in relational database technology, Chris Date spends much of his time explaining. Software designers and engineers, teachers, nontechnical users, journalists, and others seek him out, looking for answers on this most talked-about yet least-understood, technology. He writes. He lectures. He explains. Fortunately, it's something he enjoys doing. As an independent author, lecturer, teacher, and consultant, Date has devoted himself to this task, while forging ahead with original research intended to augment and refine the relational model itself. He recently worked with David McGoveran to solve problems in view 
updatability, and collaborated with Hugh Darwen on "The Third Manifesto",
a document that defines the qualities and features in relational DBMSs necessary to support
object-oriented operations.
Date's books number 22, and his papers number more than 200. His most popular book, An Introduction to Database Systems, has sold nearly 500,000 copies and has just reached its sixth edition. His other books include A Guide to DB2, with Colin White (4th edition, Addison-Wesley, 1992), and A Guide to Sybase and SQL Server (Addison-Wesley, 1992), with David McGoveran. Date continues to write magazine articles, including a monthly column that appears in DBMS's sister publication, Database Programming & Design. He also recently began a collaboration with David McGoveran and Fabian Pascal to produce a newsletter called "The Data Independent". Chris Date received his B.A. in Mathematics from Cambridge University (U.K.) in 1962, and entered the computer business as a mathematical programmer at Leo Computers Ltd. (London), where he quickly moved into education and training. In 1966, he earned his Master's degree at Cambridge, and, in 1967, he joined IBM Hursley (U.K) as a programming instructor. Between 1969 and 1974, he was a principal instructor in IBM's European education program. In 1970, he became involved in defining database extensions to PL/1, and, as part of this activity, read Dr. E. F. "Ted" Codd's original Communications of the ACM paper on relational databases. Date and his colleague Paul Hopewell corresponded with Codd, who was then at IBM Research in San Jose, Calif. In 1971, Codd invited Date to the U.S. to give presentations on the PL/1 database effort. In 1974, IBM assigned Date to IBM California to design database extensions for high-level languages such as Cobol, Fortran, and PL/1, as part of IBM's "Future Systems" (FS) project. While he would have preferred to design just relational extensions, he was instructed to combine the elements of hierarchical, network, and relational technology to match IBM's database product line. In the late 1970s, he accomplished this in UDL (Unified Data Language), and he claims that UDL's relational implementation is still superior to today's SQL. Nonetheless, IBM opted for SQL in its SQL/DS and DB2 products. With his books gaining him wide visibility, Date found himself in demand as a speaker. He lectured to user groups and IBM customers, and at professional conferences and universities. He enjoyed teaching and believed it demonstrated IBM's leadership in technology. Date's managers at IBM didn't necessarily agree with that assessment. Ultimately, Date left IBM in 1983 and continued to write and teach. He also worked under contract for Relational Technology Inc. (RTI), which later became Ingres Corp. In 1984, Date joined Codd in forming a consultancy, Codd & Date International where he continued to develop and teach classes. Among its activities, the company advised major DBMS vendors on the direction of their relational products. Date left Codd & Date in 1991 to return to the independent status he maintains today. Copyright 2003 by David M. Kalman of DBMS online
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