Relational Database Management Systems

Abstract

When I was a junior programmer, quite early in my career, my friends and I were assigned to work on a big software development project for which we would have to use unfamiliar technologies, though we were promised that training would be provided before the project started. All we knew in advance was that the operating system was something called VAX/ VMS; we did not know which programming language or database would be used. The very first thing the instructor said was (paraphrasing) “First you have to insert your definitions into the CDD,” and he walked to the chalkboard and wrote the commands that we needed for the purpose. Needless to say, we were quite flustered because we had no idea what those “definitions” might be or what a “CDD” was and how it fit into the big picture.