> Oracle must be miffed: they built the first relational database
No way. What about System R? And there were probably others of which I am unaware. Many of the now-standard RDBMS implementation techniques were pioneered in System R. This paper has a good overview: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/SystemR.pdf
Ah, I see; it was just the first commercially available relational database - at least according to wiki, it beat the commercial version of System R (System/38) "by a few weeks" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL#History I read somewhere that it was previously thought of as nice theoretically but not fast enough to be practical.
I'm actually very interested in what made the relational model so commercially successful, if you happen to know more about it (it's hard to judge now, because so many other features have been added and market standardization etc). The mathematicians say it was because it's based on a mathematical model - but that doesn't sound like it would be very convincing to pragmatic benefit-oriented business buyers.
EDIT that pdf looks pretty good - I'll have a proper read of it when I get the chance - thanks
No way. What about System R? And there were probably others of which I am unaware. Many of the now-standard RDBMS implementation techniques were pioneered in System R. This paper has a good overview: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/SystemR.pdf