Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The History of Databases

There probably is a true written account on how databases evolved throughout the last few years. I won't get too far into the specifics here. From a high level, databases have been around for quite some time, just not computerized. Originally, databases were known as ledgers and card catalogs. These were maintained by people and really took a lot of manpower to maintain. When computers came around, it was really a logical progression to move databases to that platform. As processing power and storage increased and overall cost decreased, databases became more prevalent in the business world. Many paper processes became computer- oriented and all the data that would have normally been stored on paper forms in filing cabinets began to be stored in computer databases. Today, almost every business has a database of some sort, whether it be a lower-end Microsoft Access database or a higher-end SQL Server or Oracle database.

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