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We review various theoretical methods that have been used in recent years to calculate dynamical correlation functions of many-body systems. Time-dependent correlation functions and their associated frequency spectral densities are the quantities of interest, for they play a central role in both the theoretical and experimental understanding of dynamic properties. The calculation of the relaxation function is rather difficult in most cases of interest, except for a few examples where exact analytic expressions are allowed. For most of systems of interest approximation schemes must be used. The method of recurrence relation has, at its foundation, the solution of Heisenberg equation of motion of an operator in a many-body interacting system. Insights have been gained from theorems that were discovered with that method. For instance, the absence of pure exponential behavior for the relaxation functions of any Hamiltonian system. The method of recurrence relations was used in quantum systems such as dense electron gas, transverse Ising model, Heisenberg model, XY model, Heisenberg model with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions, as well as classical harmonic oscillator chains. Effects of disorder were considered in some of those systems. In the cases where analytical solutions were not feasible, approximation schemes were used, but are highly model-dependent. Another important approach is the numerically exact diagonalization method. It is used in finite-sized systems, which sometimes provides very reliable information of the dynamics at the infinite-size limit. In this work, we discuss the most relevant applications of the method of recurrence relations and numerical calculations based on exact diagonalizations.