The Multics Relational Data Store, or MRDS for short, was the first commercial

relational database management system A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...

. It was written in PL/1 by

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building automation, industrial automa ...

for the

Multics Multics ("MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service") is an influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory.Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System", Communications of t ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

and first sold in June 1976. Unlike the

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

systems that emerged in the late 1970s and early 80s, MRDS used a command language only for basic data manipulation, equivalent to the SELECT or UPDATE statements in SQL. Other operations, like creating a new database, or general file management, required the use of a separate command program.

References

*Paul McJones
"Multics Relational Data Store (MRDS)"
Multics software Proprietary database management systems {{Database-software-stub