[ih] History of Online Databases

[David P. Reed]

Hey guys, depends on what you mean by "online" database and 
"network".   Online databases predated the ARPANET by years.   Project 
MAC/CTSS had online databases accessible remotely over the telephone 
network, used by ordinary people for research in the early 1960's. In the 
late 1960's and early 1970's there were lots of databases that were 
replicated across networks and accessed across networks - Lockheed, DRI, 
NEXIS, are just some examples.

IBM had distributed databases that were accessible over SNA in the early 
1970's, using CICS.

SABRE was distributed quite early, and again was a networked high-volume 
transaction system.

SAGE was a distributed database system itself, giving real-time access to a 
wide variety of dynamic data, in the 1950's (I think).

If you are looking for WWW browser accessible databases, the first 
PERL-script systems that built dynamic web pages from databases that I know 
of were created at U of Illinois, by folks like my friend Brygg Ullmer, who 
was 14 or 15 years old at the time (1992 or so).  Probably at other early 
locations like CERN.

But years prior to that, in 1983 or so Ray Ozzie built the core of Lotus 
Notes, which is a fully distributed, replicated database system.

And the idea of decentralized replicated databases on networks precedes my 
1978 Ph.D. thesis about coordinating atomic actions on them.   Examples 
include work by Stonebraker at Berkeley and System R* at IBM in 1975 or 1976.

At 10:21 PM 1/17/2003 -0500, John Day wrote:
>At 21:17 +0000 1/17/03, David L. Mills wrote:
>>Rick,
>>
>>I submit the first online ubiquitous database was the ARPANET host name
>>file. This may not be what you have in mind.
>
>;-)  Well, strictly speaking yes, but . . .
>
>Perhaps more closely,  actually I would say the NIC and NLS was really the 
>first database system on the net.  Then there were the CCA guys who were 
>really trying to do distributed databases.  But I don't remember when they 
>were up and running.  And also the National Software Works!
>
>Take care,
>John
>