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Father of the RDBMS and a whole lot more
OBITUARIES COME WITH old age - both the ones that I write and my own some day. Several years ago, I promised myself that I would try to meet people whom I admire before either of us died. Dr. Edgar Codd was one of my successes in that regard. By the time you read this column, Dr. Codd's death will be old news.
Other obit writers will have rehashed the industry story about how Dr. Codd invented the relational model at IBM and how it became SQL. That's funny in a way because Dr. Codd used to gripe about SQL failing to meet his mathematical model, but it's the standard RDBMS language today and for the foreseeable future.
While all of this is true and rather important to me (as my entire professional reputation is based on SQL), this summation overlooks many...