IBM System R

IBM System R is a database system built as a research project at IBM's San Jose Research Laboratory beginning in 1974,^[1] led by Edgar Codd, to implement his ideas on relational databases.^[2] System R was a seminal project as the first implementation of SQL, which has since become the standard relational data query language. It was also the first system to demonstrate that a relational database could provide good transaction processing performance. Design decisions in System R, as well as some fundamental algorithm choices (such as the dynamic programming algorithm used in query optimization^[3]), influenced many later relational systems.

System R's first customer was Pratt & Whitney in 1977.^[4] Not running on Unix hurt its popularity.^[2]

See also

• IBM Db2
• IBM SQL/DS
• Ingres (database)
• SQL
• System/38