Guest lecture by Database Specialist and Independent Consultant C. J. Date on Wednesday, May 19, at 9.15 to 11 in room B222, Exactum building.
Abstract: The foundation of the database field is the relational model. However, there are some in the database community, and certainly in the industry, and to some extent in academia also, who don't seem to be as familiar with that model as they ought to be; there are others who seem to think it isn't very interesting or relevant to the day-to-day business of earning a living; and there are still others who seem to think all of the foundation-level problems have been solved. Indeed, there seems to be a widespread feeling that "the world has moved on," so to speak, and the relational model as such is somehow passé. Nothing could be further from the truth! In this talk, the lecturer wants to sketch the results of some of his own investigations into database foundations over the past twenty years or so; his aim is to convey some of the excitement and abiding interest that is still to be found in those investigations, with a view to inspiring others in the field to become involved in such activities.
Almost all of the ideas to be covered in the talk either are part of, or else build on top of, The Third Manifesto (C. J. Date and Hugh Darwen: Foundation for Future Database Systems: The Third Manifesto, 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2000). The Third Manifesto is a detailed proposal for the future direction of data and database management systems (DBMSs). Like Codd's original papers on the relational model, it can be seen as an abstract blueprint for the design of a DBMS and the language interface to such a DBMS.
The talk is a keynote presentation originally prepared for the 28th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB'02), Hong Kong, August 2002.
About the lecturer: C. J. "Chris" Date is an independent author, lecturer, researcher, and consultant of international renown, specializing in relational database technology. He is best known for his book An Introduction to Database Systems (eighth edition, Addison-Wesley, 2004), which has sold some 725,000 copies and is used by several hundred colleges and universities worldwide.
Welcome!