evolution of relational database

Hello everyone, I'm new to this group (newsgroups for that matter). I've found this group out of necessity today. While in class today my teacher brought up the point that relational databases got their name not because of the relationships between attributes, but because of the mathematical set theory from which the relational model was derived. So then next logical question to me seemed to be... "What can you tell us about the mathematical set theory from which this model came from?" Well, he didn't really know the answer so he said, "I don't know but since you're interested you can find out and give the class a presentation when you do." At that point I had a sinking feeling in my gut. Now I really want to find out about this. So, can anyone help me to understand the set theory and how it brought about relational databases?
I've been reading on www.mathpages.com but I'm not having a lot of luck in seeing how the set theory applies to relational databases.

I also read
A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks by E. F. Codd which I found at
http://www.cmpe.boun.edu.tr/~rxk00500/codd/toc.html.

Neither of these really seem to have what I'm looking for. The former is probably the most I've found on the set theory and the latter seems to give a very good explanation of the relational model. Yet I'm still trying to connect the two.

Regards,
David D
sspunx_at_hotmail.com Received on Tue Nov 21 2000 - 04:47:34 CET