For purposes of reference if nothing else, it seems appropriate in this chapter to document Codd's own stated objectives in introducing his relational model. The following list is based on one he gave in his paper "Recent Investigations into Relational Data Base Systems" (an invited paper to the 1974 IFIP Congress), but I've edited it just slightly here.
I'll leave it to you to judge to what extent you think the relational model meets these objectives. Myself, I think it does pretty well. |