Charles Bachman on the Shift to Database-Centered Point of View

Mr. Bachman was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by Barack Obama in 2012.

The Boston Globe: Charles W. Bachman, a software engineer whose creation of the first database management system helped popularize computers in the corporate world and earned him the highest honor in computer science, died July 13 at his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 92.

From A Very Short History of Digitization:

1973  Charles Bachman is awarded the Turing Award. From The Programmer as Navigator, Bachman’s Turing Award lecture: “Copernicus presented us with a new point of view and laid the foundation for modern celestial mechanics… A new basis for understanding is available in the area of information systems. It is achieved by a shift from a computer-centered to the database-centered point of view. This new understanding will lead to new solutions to our database problems and speed our conquest of the n-dimensional data structures which best model the complexities of the real world… The availability of direct access storage devices laid the foundation for the Copernican-like change in viewpoint… From this point, I want to begin the programmer’s training as a full-fledged navigator in an n-dimensional data space.”