Relational SQL databases, which have been around since the 1980s, historically ran on mainframes or single servers—that’s all we had. If you wanted the database to handle more data and run faster, you ...

Excel used to be the poor schmuck’s database, with spreadsheets that just sort of sat there. You could create something more sophisticated with LOOKUP functions, but they were a huge hassle to set up.

In the beginning, there were files. Later there were navigational databases based on structured files. Then there were IMS and CODASYL, and around 40 years ago we had some of the first relational ...