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The author mentions the Codd-OLAP conflict of interest, lamenting that despite what happened "Codd is still regarded as the father of the relational database". But this remark sounds like a non sequitur to me. No matter the scandal he got into in the 90s, he still invented relational algebra back in the 70s, didn't he?

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the “scandal”

> coined the term Online analytical processing (OLAP) and wrote the "twelve laws of online analytical processing". Controversy erupted, however, after it was discovered that this paper had been sponsored by Arbor Software (subsequently Hyperion, now acquired by Oracle), a conflict of interest that had not been disclosed, and Computerworld withdrew the paper.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_F._Codd

He published a scientific paper that was to some degree paid advertising, and didn't disclose the payment.

That kind of thing still totally counts as a scandal.

Indeed, but was the paper wrong?

It doesn't matter. The undisclosed conflict of interest should eliminate it from consideration.

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