Re: The Practical Benefits of the Relational Model

Mountain Main,

What does this elusive concept of being "inside" the DBMS really mean?
-Everything in the same OS "process" space (so much for multi-user)?
-Everything that is managed by the system (but what does "managed"
entail)?
-Information that is stored by the system (code also being information)?
-Everything that is not "outside" the system (obvious recursive
definition)?

I would suggest that this topic is a red herring. The bottom line of development productivity is determined by the amount of work required of the app developer to bring a general system into a specific state. The resulting application itself forms a DBMS of sorts. Not a general purpose one, but one specifically made up of all components necessary to provide the designated services.

All this said, the essence of the problem is that we want no more "layers" of complexity than are necessary to create the application. We also want to describe the application as much at the same "level" as possible. To this end, it is terribly useful to have a single language in which to describe the application... then have the rest of the system (possibly even consisting of other components including the clients) be able to derive their behavior appropriately. This may sound far fetched, but I know it is possible because I have seen a Relational implementation that does this. I will stop here since this is a theory group. ;-)

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Nathan Allan

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Posted via http://dbforums.com Received on Fri Aug 30 2002 - 01:19:52 CEST