Re: History question -- Tarski and Codd

In article <3dae743a$1_at_news.uia.ac.be>, Jan.Hidders <hidders_at_hcoss.uia.ac.be> wrote:

> In article <3DADE847.44F00720_at_cs.uoregon.edu>,
> John H. E. Fiskio-Lasseter <johnfl_at_cs.uoregon.edu> wrote:
> >
> >I'm interested in the knowing the influence of this paper on Codd's
> >formulation of relational algebra, as they seem closely related. One
> >obvious step is to get copies of Codd's papers, but I'm having a bit of
> >trouble tracking them down at the moment.
>
> I've been wondering about that myself. There is for example an interesting
> article by Jan Van den Bussche on the influence of Tarski's work on database
> theory:
>
> http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/443292.html

This was extremely helpful, although there are parts of it for which I'm stuck in stupidity. "Cylindrification along a dimension i", for example, makes no sense to me, nor is the equivalence between the RA presented by Van den Bussche and that actually given by Tarski in the JSL paper completely obvious (that one I can probably work out myself, though).

On a side note, JAN HIDDERS: I've tried to send an email "thank you" for the additional message you sent, relaying Van den Bussche's thoughts (and the translation from Flemish for this monolingually challenged American :-) It's bounced twice, though. Anyway, thanks!

> Even there it is not made clear if Codd knew about Tarski's work or not. A
> good test would probably be to look up the following article:
>
> E. F. Codd: Relational Completeness of Data Base Sublanguages. In: R.
> Rustin (ed.): Database Systems: 65-98, Prentice Hall and IBM Research
> Report RJ 987, San Jose, California : (1972)

I had to order this book through interlibrary loan, and it just came in today.

• John

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  John Fiskio-Lasseter CIS Dept., University of Oregon
  • Phd. Student, Graduate Research Fellow, and former GTFF Steward
  • Deschutes 234 x6-1385 johnfl_at_cs.uoregon.edu

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    Wit, an' it be thy will, put me into good fooling. Those wits who think they have thee do very oft prove fools, while I, who am sure I lack thee, may yet pass for a wise man. For what says Quinapalus: "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit". _Twelfth Night_

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