The relational model, first proposed in 1970 by Edgar F. Codd, departed from this tradition by insisting that applications should search for data by content, rather than by following links. The relational model employs sets of ledger-style tables, each used for a different type of entity. Only in the mid-1980s did computing hardware become powerful enough to allow the wide deployment of relational systems (DBMSs plus applications). By the early 1990s, however, relational systems dominated in all large-scale data processing applications, and as of 2015[update] they remain dominant : IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server are the top DBMS. The dominant database language, standardised SQL for the relational model, has influenced database languages for other data models.[citation needed]
Instead of using links, how was information found in a relational model?
by content