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The Universal Relation


I took a databases class last year. In it, we learned about some theory and some practice and one of the most oft-cited papers was “On the Universal Relation” (1979) by Marc H. Graham (“MH Graham” on Google Scholar) at the University of Toronto. It’s apparently a classic. It’s got some foundational work in databases. It’s also nowhere to be found online, and local libraries did not have it. Everybody cites it… has anybody read it?

In it, we learned about some theory and some practice and one of the most oft-cited papers was “On the Universal Relation” (1979) by Marc H. Graham (“MH Graham” on Google Scholar) at the University of Toronto. I took a couple of days to track down a physical copy from across the country, ordered it to my local library, scanned the paper, and now I am putting it here for the world to see. I had to keep the spine of the book intact and in decent condition, so I couldn’t press it too flat.

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Universal Relation