[taylonr]

Just to nitpick, the article says aggregates have been in SQL for 3 or 4 decades, but SQL wasn't an ANSI standard until 1986 (28 years ago, almost 3 decades.) I get that a language exists before it is standardized, so were aggregates in SQL in the 70s/ early 80s or is this just a hyperbolic statement?

[thraxil]

COUNT() and SUM() are aggregates. I'd be pretty surprised if they, or equivalents, weren't in very early versions of SQL.

[MetaCosm]

Around from the very start in one form or another.