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Computer databases first emerged in the late 1960s after computers had become powerful enough to handle large amounts of financial, human resources and bank data. Let’s take a look at the history of how modern databases came about.
1960s: navigational databases, mostly hierarchical databases and network databases, were first used
1970: E.F. Codd from IBM introduces the concept of relational databases and the first normal form
1971: second and third normal form are introduced by Codd
1973: project INGRES (the predecessor of PostgreSQL) begins in Berkeley
1974: project System R begins at IBM, developing the first implementation of SQL
1974: Boyce-Codd normal form is introduced
1976: the entity-relationship model is introduced by Peter Chen from MIT
1977: 4th normal form by R. Fagin
1978: the first release of Oracle DB, based on IBM’s papers
1979: public release of Oracle Version 2 (version 1 was never released)
1979: 5th normal form by R. Fagin
1983: the very first release of IBM DB2 database
1985: project INGRES ends, the post-Ingres project starts in Berkeley
1990: the first public release of Postgres database
1990s: relational databases are the industry standard
2000s: NoSQL and NewSQL movements emerge
2013: Vertabelo, the first web-based database modeling tool, is released ;-)
