Raymond F. Boyce (1946–1974) was an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

who was known for his research in

relational database A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

s. He is best known for his work co-developing the SQL database language and Boyce-Codd normal form.

Biography

Boyce grew up in

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, and went to college at Providence College, from which he graduated in 1968. He earned his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in computer science at

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in 1972. His wife Sanndy, whom he met in college, was a nurse. After leaving Purdue, he worked on

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

projects for IBM in Yorktown Heights, New York. In the short period that he had, which was not quite two years long, he co-developed

Boyce–Codd normal form Boyce–Codd normal form (or BCNF or 3.5NF) is a normal form used in database normalization. It is a slightly stronger version of the third normal form (3NF). BCNF was developed in 1974 by Raymond F. Boyce and Edgar F. Codd to address certain typ ...

. Together with

Donald D. Chamberlin Donald D. Chamberlin is an American computer scientist who is one of the principal designers of the original SQL language specification with Raymond Boyce. He also made significant contributions to the development of XQuery. Chamberlin was e ...

, he co-developed Structured Query Language ( SQL) while managing the Relation Database development group for IBM in

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. He died in 1974 as a result of an

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, leaving behind his wife Sanndy and his infant daughter Kristin.

SQL

SQL was initially co-developed at IBM by Boyce alongside

in the early 1970s. Initially called SEQUEL (Structured English Query Language) and based on their original language called SQUARE (Specifying Queries As Relational Expressions). SEQUEL was designed to manipulate and retrieve data in relational databases. By 1974, Chamberlin and Boyce published “SEQUEL: A Structured English Query Language” which detailed their refinements to SQUARE and introduced us to the data retrieval aspects of SEQUEL. It was one of the first languages to use

Edgar F. Codd Edgar Frank "Ted" Codd (19 August 1923 – 18 April 2003) was an English computer scientist who, while working for IBM, invented the relational model for database management, the theoretical basis for relational databases and relational databa ...

relational model The relational model (RM) is an approach to managing data using a Structure (mathematical logic), structure and language consistent with first-order logic, first-order predicate logic, first described in 1969 by English computer scientist Edgar F. ...

. SEQUEL was later renamed to SQL by dropping the vowels, because SEQUEL was a trade mark registered by the Hawker Siddeley aircraft company. Today, SQL has become the most widely used relational database language.

Boyce-Codd normal form

(or BCNF) was developed in 1974 by Boyce and

. It is a type of normal form that is used in database normalization. The goal of relational database design is to generate a set of

database schema The database schema is the structure of a database described in a formal language supported by the database management system (DBMS). The term "schema" refers to the organization of data as a blueprint of how the database is constructed (divide ...

s that store information without unnecessary redundancy. Boyce-Codd accomplishes this and allows users to retrieve information easily. Using BCNF, databases will have all redundancy removed based on functional dependencies. It is a slightly stronger version of the

third normal form Third normal form (3NF) is a database schema design approach for relational databases which uses normalizing principles to reduce the duplication of data, avoid data anomalies, ensure referential integrity, and simplify data management. It was de ...

Biography

SQL

Boyce-Codd normal form

References

Further reading