I had great difficulty in controlling my mirth while I read the self-congratulatory article "Database Systems: Achievements and Opportunities" in the October, 1991, issue of the Communications,...

I had little difficult in controlling my mirth when I realized that in 18 years, some things haven't changed. Linkbait, drama, and trolling all still look the same.

As a designer of commercial manufacturing applications on IBM mainframes in the late 1960's and early 1970's...

If you're going to wave your resume, make sure it's "wavable". If I had had a hand as a designer of commercial manufacturing applications on IBM mainframes in the late 1960's and early 1970's, I sure wouldn't brag about it. They were an excellent example of what not to do: so expensive, so difficult to deploy and use, and so ineffective, that the whole world rushed out to write better apps on mini-computers, and eventually, PCs. Ironically, the one thing they did do well was their relational database storage systems. If you owned a multi-million dollar AMAPS installation in 1978, the COBOL apps were soon worthless. The only thing salvageable was the TOTAL DBMS.

I can categorically state that relational databases set the commercial data processing industry back at least ten years and wasted many of the billions of dollars that were spent on data processing.

This conclusion is based upon what data? Maybe in 1991, you could bullshit the ACM without supporting data, but 2009 readers demand citings. Wikis & google have exposed the posers.

Unfortunately, relational databases performed a task that didn't need doing; e.g., these databases were orders of magnitude slower than the "flat files" they replaced,

Again, based upon what data? From what planet? Just because someone overnormalized a commercial database doesn't make it the fault of the underlying technology. That would be like saying, "That webpage sucks, therefore HTML sucks."

Why were relational databases such a Procrustean bed? Because organizations, budgets, products, etc., are hierarchical...

Organizations, budgets, products, etc. are data sources and sinks and can be structured any number of ways, including hierarchical. But the lifeblood of any business is its order flow and business processes which are almost always ideally suited to be relational; they're "linked" to almost everything else. Not everything has to be in 4th normal form, but flat files and hirerarchical data bases are almost always a poor stepchild to RDBMS for business flow.

These databases could also respond quickly to "real-time" requests for information, because the data was readily accessible through pointers and hash tables--without performing "joins".

I guess it's not really fair to "debate" with an OP from a generation ago. Even with Moore's Law, he would have had a hard time wrapping his head around where the real bottlenecks would be today. But one thing really hasn't changed that much: throughput has rarely been on the critical path. Why sacrifice data integrity, adherance to business rules, and effective delivery of user needs for a few microseconds? I remember routinely witnessing subsecond intercontinental response time on massive relational database installations as early as 1981. Why didn't OP?

Oh, and RDBMS with pointers and hash tables have been around since 1965:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system

and now also support object oriented technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterSystems_Cach%C3%A9

I shudder to think about the large number of man-years that were devoted during the 1970's and 1980's to "optimizing" relational databases to the point where they could remotely compete in the marketplace.

I shudder to think about the large number of man-years lost by PHBs who read drivel like this and waste the time of people who do real work with initiatives derived from these drama-based conclusions.

Database research has produced a number of good results, but the relational database is not one of them.

From someone who has built a career rescuing so many manufacturers and distributors from flat file systems with relational database technology to whoever posted this: thanks for the laugh. I really needed it on a tough Monday.