Re: Is relational theory irrelevant?

"Serge Rielau" <srielau_at_ca.eye-bee-m.com> wrote in message <news:bpc4ci$ogk$1_at_hanover.torolab.ibm.com>...

> Ragarding c) the realtional model is built for semantic beauty. Semantic
> beauty does not make for a fast web-experience. Pipelining however does.
> So a lot of effort is being made to pipeline SQL. Often the rules of the
> relational model are bent to get there.

This is because SQL is so b0rked. Query optimizers' hands are tied because most any transformation could change the results.

> Example:
> SELECT * FROM (SELECT sendmail() FROM T) AS X WHERE c1 > 100;
> How many emails shall be send? Correct (IMHO) would be: As many emails
> as there are rows in T. In reality many DBMS will push the predicate
> through to T for the sake of speed, and most customers evidently don't care.

Agreed, queries calling functions with side effects is b0rked.

> I personally often wish I worked in academia where I could fix the
> system of it's legacy bugs and most importantly always place my version
> of correctnes above all.

Naah, you're still dealing with "customers" to get grants, funds, and grad students.

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