#^ecause you are reading this, 1 assume that you have recently become interested in database. Perhaps you would like to impress your friends by casually tossing out some big words that they have never heard before — words such as semantic object model, denormalization, or maybe even tuple. Perhaps your boss at work has just informed you that your department will be computerizing its records and that you have been assigned to build the data base. Whatever your motivation, this book will get you started down the path to becoming a true database guru. When you reach that exalted level, impress ing your friends with big words will pale in significance compared to what you will be able to do with your organization's most important information.
Ever since computers became powerful enough to support them, databases have been at the core of both commercial and scientific data processing. The domain of database processing includes any problem or task that must deal with large amounts of data. Most database systems in existence today, and practically all new systems being implemented, make use of relational data base technology, the subject of this book.
