Re: OO's best feature survey results
Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 22:32:11 -0500
Message-ID: <H6KdnQf86rTNUTiiRVn-sQ_at_golden.net>
"Topmind" <topmind_at_technologist.com> wrote in message
news:4e705869.0311021410.7dc4737b_at_posting.google.com...
> >
> > > Oracle added,
> > > what's it called, that parent-of operator, to address the BOM issue,
> > > other extensions have been added to address time-series temporal data,
> > > full support for temporal and spatial datatypes have been proposed
> > > many times.
> >
> > They are extensions to the languages, but not to The Relational Model.
> > The RM allows complex types, interval types, recursive operators,
> > transitive closure, etc.
> >
>
> Allowing and being "part of" are two different things. For example,
> JOIN may require a way to compare columns from two different
> tables for equality. However, it does not define *how*
> equality is derived. A particular "type" may have some
> goofy test for equality, but relational does not care.
>
> I think all that it demands is that operators return
> Boolean types or Boolean "answers" so that it can match or
> filter rows and columns. What those operators operate
> on is not directly part of relational. Traditionally
> we have used numbers, strings, and dates, but it is not
> limited to those. (Everything else can probably be derived
> from just numbers and strings, but that is another debate.)
>
> In short, relational only requires that operators return
> "yes" or "no". Beyond that, it does not give a fudge what
> they do as long as they don't change data for non-updating
> queries.
>
> Correct me if I am wrong.
Concatenation, for instance, returns a character string. Received on Mon Nov 03 2003 - 04:32:11 CET