a computer-centered view of information systems to a database-centered view

Code.Complete.Second.Edition 2004

Bachman compared the Ptolemaic-to-Copernican change in astronomy to the change in computer programming in the early 1970s.

When Bachman made the comparison in 1973, data processing was changing from a computer-centered view of information systems to a database-centered view. Bachman pointed out that the ancients of data processing wanted to view all data as a sequential stream of cards flowing through a computer (the computer-centered view). The change was to focus on a pool of dat a on which the computer happened to act (a database-oriented view).

Today it’s difficult to imagine anyone thinking that the sun moves around the earth.Similarly, it’s difficult to imagine a programmer thinking that all data could be viewed as a sequential stream of cards. In both cases, once the old theory has been discarded, it seems incredible that anyone ever believed it at all. More fantastically, people who believed the old theory thought the new theory was just as ridiculous then as you think the old theory is now. The earth-centered view of the universe hobbled astronomers who clung to it after a better theory was available. Similarly, the computer-centered view of the computing universe hobbled computer scientists who held on to it after the database-centered theory was available.