Does anyone know when the term "schema" was first used in computing (e.g. "database schema")? It has an interesting (and related) meaning in psychology, which seems to predate the term's use in computing.

"Extending the database *relational *model to capture more meaning" by codd already mentions it in 1979

Interesting. I had only looked up Codd’s first paper and noticed he hadn't used the term there. But in his 1972 paper, he's using the term as if it already has an accepted meaning. So perhaps computer scientists were talking about “schemas” prior to the relational model?

yes, I thought the same about the usage without having to explain it

It was definitely in use by computer scientists before it became an established term in the database world. I believe it was Jean Piaget who introduced ‘schema’ to psychology in the 1920s-1930s. But schema had already been developed in philosophy (such as Kant in Critique of Pure Reason). Also developed in logic to specify rules of inference, mathematics to describe theories with infinite axioms, and adequacy conditions in semantics. Point being that psychology was itself appropriating a prior term. So pinning down when this happened for computing is really hard. Many early computer scientists were influenced by the prominent theories of mind when thinking about the nature of information, knowledge, reasoning, etc. I’d have to dig harder but my suspicion is that there'll be written accounts of ‘schemas’ in computing going back into the 50s, because the prominence of things like constructivism, first-order logic, and the theories of mind/knowledge/reasoning that used that term became prominent in the 30s, right as many of those people were in school/university.

Yeah, it appears logicians and philosophers use the term "schema" too. However, the meaning in psychology seems to be the closest to the meaning in database theory. The term "program schema" was seemingly coined in 1958. It means something similar to "pseudo-code" or perhaps an AST. I'm not sure if this usage eventually morphed into what we know as "database schemas", or if it is just coincidence.

So far as I know the Greek word for a shape (like a cutout or silhouette) was pulled into philosophy in the late 1700s, after which -> maths/logic -> computer science. Most of the vocabulary of CS was imported by analogy from other disciplines by people who pre-dated the field of CS itself.

So you believe the term was adapted from the use in logic? I still can't get over how nicely the definition in psychology translates to information systems: “a framework for organising and assimilating information”.