Re: The Theoretical Foundations of the Relational Model

From: Thaddeus L Olczyk <olczyk_at_interaccess.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 02:10:04 -0500
Message-ID: <ve2rgu80cstl3rvr4froeg4chs39f0pker@4ax.com>

On 14 Jun 2002 16:42:43 -0700, paul_geoffrey_brown_at_yahoo.com (Paul G. Brown) wrote:

>In the midst of the current flare-up in the long-running 'objects vs 

> relations' flame-war, I thought it might be useful to take a moment,
> step back, and explain to the object folk something of where the
> relational crowd are coming from. I'm going to try to do this without
> once mentioning the word 'database'. (Oops.)
I'm sorry I just stopped by briefly tonight so I will have to thoroughly read the post some other time.

I do however have an observation I would like to share. Everytime I've met a DBA who claimed the superiority of the relational model because of it's strong mathematical foundation, I've asked them to recite Codds rules. Invariably they can't. So much for a strong mathematical foundation.

BTW if you show Codd's rules to a *real* mathematician. Say an algebraicist or topologist. They would say that they form a set of definitions, not a set of axioms. Received on Mon Jun 17 2002 - 02:10:04 CDT