[ih] History of Online Databases

[Rick]

On 17 Jan 2003 at 21:17, David L. Mills wrote:
> I submit the first online ubiquitous database was the ARPANET host name
> file. This may not be what you have in mind.

Good point + you must be right. But the host name file
was online of necessity, not through a choice of
online vs offline.

What I really had in mind is when were the first
databases designed for non-technical users -- research,
academic or commercial -- that were online as a result
of a conscious decision?

I would guess that the first such databases appeared
very soon after the WWW became public. The need for
dynamic content must have been apparent very quickly.

To me, it seems that it should have been a landmark
event, and I'm puzzled why I can't find anything about
it on the WWW today.

Could it be that online databases were already so common
(John Day's land-use management system dates from 1974)
that it was not considered anything special?

I'll give you another 'context' -- some people I know
who run a UK non-profit org have set up what they call
an 'online database'. In fact it is totally offline --
they use it to generate 20,000 web pages which they then
FTP to their server every week. I try to explain that
nobody else does that - and never have done since the
WWW began. I'm sure I'm correct, but is there any
evidence? Apart from that, as someone who teaches web
development and design, I have found that I need a
detailed historical undertanding to do the job properly.
I wasn't there at the time.

(Rick)
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