DATA: THE NEW CORPORATE RESOURCE - Fundamentals of Database Management Systems - page 6

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FIGURE 1.3
New types of data with the
advance of civilization

As time went on, more and different kinds of data and records were kept.
These included calendars, census data, surveys, land ownership records, marriage
records, records of church contributions, and family trees, Figure 1.3. Increasingly
sophisticated merchants had to keep track of inventories, shipments, and wage
payments in addition to production data. Also, as farming went beyond the
subsistence level and progressed to the feudal manor stage, there was a need
to keep data on the amount of produce to consume, to barter with, and to keep as
seed for the following year.
The Crusades took place from the late eleventh to the late thirteenth centuries.
One side effect of the Crusades was a broader view of the world on the part of the
Europeans, with an accompanying increase in interest in trade. A common method of
trade in that era was the establishment of temporary partnerships among merchants,
ships captains, and owners to facilitate commercial voyages. This increased level of
commercial sophistication brought with it another round of increasingly complex
record keeping, specifically, double-entry bookkeeping.
Double-entry bookkeeping originated in the trading centers of fourteenth-
century Italy. The earliest known example, from a merchant in Genoa, dates to the
year 1340. Its use gradually spread, but it was not until 1494, in Venice (about
25 years after Venice's first movable type printing press came into use), that
a Franciscan monk named Luca Pacioli published his ''Summa de Arithmetica,
Geometrica, Proportioni et Proportionalita'' a work important in spreading the use
of double-entry bookkeeping. Of course, as a separate issue, the increasing use of
paper and the printing press furthered the advance of record keeping as well.
As the dominance of the Italian merchants declined, other countries became
more active in trade and thus in data and record keeping. Furthermore, as the use
of temporary trading partnerships declined and more stable long-term mercantile
organizations were established, other types of data became necessary. For example,
annual as opposed to venture-by-venture statements of profit and loss were needed.
In 1673 the ''Code of Commerce'' in France required every businessman to draw up
a balance sheet every two years. Thus the data had to be periodically accumulated
for reporting purposes.