"Paul Vernon" <paul.vernon_at_ukk.ibmm.comm> wrote in message
news:b9g04u$4sjg$1_at_gazette.almaden.ibm.com...
> "Costin Cozianu" <c_cozianu_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:b9e38p$i9a88$1_at_ID-152540.news.dfncis.de...
> > Paul Vernon wrote:
> > > "Pablo Sanchez" <pablo_at_dev.null> wrote in message
> > > news:Xns9373EB0EF7592pingottpingottbah_at_216.166.71.233...
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > >>My school of thought is that a DBMS shouldn't be the end-all
> > >>solution.
> > >
> > >
> > > I would be genuinely interested in knowing why you think that. Do you
have
> any
> > > deep reasons? Maybe you just want to protect the job creation scheme
that
> is
> > > the role of 'Applications Programmer' ????
> > >
> >
> > I'll give you another reason: intractability. Some problems are
> > unsolvable in the database, or at least in the database as we understand
> > databases now.
> >
> >
> > Unless you want the database language to have the full programming power
> > *and* expressivity as a full blown language - say LISP, and massage the
> > whole echillada in the DBMS, which would be truely horrible.
>
> You make a good point Costin. My take is that we do want full expressive
power
> in the DMBS, but that we also want to restrict that power and not make it
> available to untrusted users.
>
> What I'm thinking is that the language available on a DBMS is a nesting of
> subsequently more expressive languages.
>
> So there might be a basic relational core - without generalised transitive
> closure - that could safely be used by even malicious database users. From
> there, the more trusted you are, the more powerful syntax you are
allowed -all
> the way up to full expressivity of say some functional language.
>
> I'm not sure how such a language would look, and I guess that logically it
> would actually be multiple languages and if only the relational subset was
> seen as the "DBMS language", then maybe I have agreed with your point, we
> don't necessarily want full expressivity in the core relational model...
I don't see how we will create user-defined operations for user-defined
types without full expressivity. Personally, I think user-defined types are
core.
Received on Fri May 09 2003 - 21:22:20 CDT
