SQL1999-standard makes no reference to term "relational" - why?

Here is a quote from
"The Third Manifesto" by Darwen and Date
(page 514, 2nd ed.):

<quote>

(...) it is worth mentioning that, although SQL is widely recognized as the international "relational" database standard, [the SQL1999 standard] does not describe itself as such; in fact, it never uses the term
"relation" at all! (Indeed, it does not use the term
"database" either; instead, as noted in Appendix H,
it talks about something called SQL-data, which is
"any data described by schemas that is uner the control
of an SQL-implementation in an SQL-environment.")

<unquote>

Can anybody tell me the reason for this?

Thanks,

Lauri Pietarinen Received on Wed Jul 17 2002 - 16:04:40 CDT