back to the future

Last month I walked through some boxes full of my old books at my parents house. There I also found my first school book about information technology. It was printed in 1990. So for me it covers almost the beginning of my life with IT.

To my surprise, the first page is not about bits, bytes or ICs. It's about communication:

With my todays background I scanned through the book and searched if there is anything about SQL or at least databases:
3 types of databases where mentioned there:

• hierarchical databases
• network databases
• relational databases

Especially relational databases where described as slow, but flexible ;-)

SQL was not mentioned within this book, but available database systems where listed:

dBASE III PLUS, Everyman, MS-R:Base, Informix, Dataflex (no Oracle or DB2, sorry).

As the first pichture in the book is still valueable, so is also the last:

Sometimes it's worth to look into his own history, and books I've read seem to be a valuable method. Many things have changed, some expectations did not come true. But it's worth to know about the own foundation.