Edgar Frank Codd

Edgar Frank "Ted" Codd was an English computer scientist (August 19, 1923 - April 18, 2003), best known for creating the relational database model.

Work

In the 1960s and 1970s he worked on his theories on data modeling, publishing his work A relational data model for large shared data banks (original title: A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks), in 1970. Much to their discontent, IBM was not quick to exploit their suggestions until they began to be put into practice by commercial rivals. For example, Larry Ellison designed the Oracle database based on Codd's ideas.

Codd continued to expand and develop his relational model, sometimes in collaboration with Chris Date. He also worked in the area of cellular automata, on which he wrote his doctoral thesis.

Codd defined the first three normal forms that apply to database normalization. Additionally, Boyce-Codd normal form is named in his honor.

He also coined the term OLAP and wrote Codd's 12 rules of the relational model for databases.