“The adverse impact on development productivity of requiring programmers to navigate along access paths to reach target data […] was enormous. In addition, it was not possible to make slight changes in the layout in storage without simultaneously having to revise all programs that relied on the previous structure. […] As a result, far too much manpower was being invested in continual (and avoidable) maintenance of application programs.”

—  E. F. Codd

Relational Database: A Practical Foundation for Productivity (1982)

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E. F. Codd 5
computer scientist 1923–2003

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