Re: foundations of relational theory?

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:<hCwnb.38621$9E1.148443_at_attbi_s52>...
> Also, having
> it be centralized (rather than procedural) opens the
> possibility of writing applications in other programming
> languages besides the one the database prefers. Allowing
> only BASIC cuts one off from quite a good deal of recent
> programming language advancements. I saw firsthand
> Pick losing contracts on that basis alone, in the mid-1980s.

Which touched a raw nerve, sparking:

> "mikepreece" <member31023_at_dbforums.com> wrote in message news:3530047.1067322155_at_dbforums.com...
> > <rant>PickBasic is brilliant for working inside a Pick DBMS. The two are
> > ideally matched - there's definitely a synergy. In a Pick DBMS
> > environment it's definitely *not* equivalent to BASIC. That Pick should
> > have lost contracts because of it can only have been due to people
> > reacting to the perception of the thing rather than the thing itself.
> > Who's to blame for that? I dunno. Back when PickBasic was first invented
> > it might not have been seen as such a bad name. Can't blame people now
> > though for jumping to the seemingly obvious conclusion that it's similar
> > in power to ordinary BASIC. You would, I think, be surprised at what we
> > can do with PickBasic - especially when it has the role of interacting
> > with the DBMS allied to functions on a web server or the host OS.</rant>
>
> I won't disagree that they are well-matched, and that there are
> advantages to having a homogeneous development environment.
> But I'm *extremely* skeptical of the idea that any variant of BASIC
> could compete on language features with a modern language. I
> could be convinced otherwise, though.
>

I'll bite (couldn't resist if I tried).

Bearing in mind that everything in Pick is a string - more or less - and that PickBasic has a feature set ideally suited to manipulating strings with Pick's specific system delimiters, I'd like to know if there's a programming language that could do a better job.

I'd go so far as to say that, provided the programmer is aware of the format, it's pretty damn handy at dealing with *any* ASCII string - regardless of where it came from or where it's going.

Can you tell me where I can find out more about a "modern language" with features that a PickBasic programmer is "cut off from"?

Regards,
Mike. Received on Wed Oct 29 2003 - 06:46:41 CET