Re: Pre-relational, post-relational, 1968 CODASYL "Survey of Data Base Systems"

From: Ken North <knorth2_at_deletethis.yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 23:04:19 -0700
Message-ID: <c6kt0r$hd$1@ngspool-d02.news.aol.com>

"Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message news:c6hpm8$iqd$1_at_news.netins.net...
> "Ken North" <knorth2_at_deletethis.yahoo.com> wrote in message

> Very interesting. I should have tried harder to find someone who was at TRW
> in the 60's. I talked with several folks who had Dick Pick's stories from
> TRW, having heard them after he left in '69.

Somewhere I have an vintage 1970s ACM survey of DBMSs that cites a paper or article about GIRLS.

> I didn't know there was controversy on that issue.

I just re-read Sundeen's Datamation article (below) over the weekend and noticed the genealogy of GIRLS.

There was a disagreement about ownership of intellectual property, but I'm not sure it was public knowledge. TRW was involved in a lawsuit with Microdata. The settlement (1974) paid to TRW was an amount that was equal to one GIM license for a year.

> Is Dwight Duettell still living?

I'm not sure. He was talking about retiring during the '70s. Google shows he was Cal Tech class of 1943.

---

Donald H. Sundeen's 1968 article describes the evolution of general purpose software. Sundeen had worked on data management systems at Informatics and Scientific Data Systems for eight years. His article also discusses earlier systems such as 9PAC developed by SHARE and the general purpose file-handling routines developed at GE's Hanford Plant in 1957. Received on Tue Apr 27 2004 - 01:04:19 CDT