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Interesting. Makes sense. Per SIGMOD 2006 paper "'A veritable bucket of facts'- origins of the data base management system", https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/
by gregw2 2y ago
Interesting. Makes sense.
Per SIGMOD 2006 paper "'A veritable bucket of facts'- origins of the data base management system", https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1147376.1147382 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1147376.1147382 / https://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/VeritableBucketOfFactsSIGMOD.pdf https://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/VeritableBucketOfFac... , "The data base concept derives from early military on-line systems"
The term "base" used with data would correlate well with the military term for "base" and perhaps adds some color to its original context.
Perhaps a "data base" originated as "A safe refuge of facts from which you would learn, train, and launch a defense or an attack?"
Or perhaps its a "base" (basis) of facts from which you operate in a military operation?
Or perhaps someone else non-military used the term first but it picked up early resonance in the military community due to its additional connotations for them or their management?
Anyway, TIL. I wonder whether a FOIA request to NSA or DoD would turn up anything.
- gregw2 2y agoCounterargument: Actually, Oxford English Dictionary says: "OED's earliest evidence for [the term] database is from 1953, in Sociometry." (Source: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/database_n#:~:text=Where%20does%20the%20noun%20database,base%20n https://www.oed.com/dictionary/database_n#:~:text=Where%20do....) (Perhaps this Sociometry? : https://www.jstor.org/stable/i329357 https://www.jstor.org/stable/i329357 ?)
- refset 2y agoI could also believe many groups arrived at the term independently, deriving naturally from conversation along the lines of: "These are the data on which decisions are based" See also Rich Hickey's definition of "basis". I bet he spent a good while digging into the etymology.