Abstract
In this lesson, I will outline the evolution of data management as a field of research. I will trace the major milestones of this evolution, beginning with the single-server systems that gave rise to the DBMS industry. These foundational beginnings of the discipline were based on the relational model and the logical query language that led to the SQL standard; the early work on optimizing queries over large volumes of data earned Edgar Codd his Turing Award. Subsequently, the development of the Internet enabled heterogeneous databases to interoperate and gave rise to new, more flexible data models known as semi-structured data models. On the hardware side, the rise of massively parallel computing models has enabled the design of distributed databases in the cloud; the memory capacities of modern servers—whether centralized or distributed—are leading to fully in-memory databases. The course will cover a variety of applications (economics, science, society, etc.) as well as the discipline’s interactions and boundaries with the social sciences and statistical learning.
