Happy 50th Birthday to SQL

For decades, it was IBM who were at the forefront of computing, and who conducted world-leading research. And, so, in 1957, they created one of the first programming languages: FORTRAN — aka FORTRAN 57. At that time, there were no large-scale computer disks, but where the program was stored on punch cards:

Figure: https://wp.ufpel.edu.br/diehl/files/2016/05/f90_lec1.pdf

FORTRAN received a major boost in 1977 with the creation of FORTRAN 77. The language was good at translating maths formulas into code, but not so good at building databases. And, so, it was in 1970 that Edgar Frank Codd published one of the most significant papers ever published in the world of software [here]:

The paper outlined the world of relational databases — and which spawned the SQL programming language. Codd was awarded the Turning Award (the Nobel Prize of Computing) for his work in 1981.

In the paper, Edgar proposed a new way of modeling data and used relationships — aka tables. This allowed us to change data…