Re: Is relational theory irrelevant?

"Serge Rielau" <srielau_at_ca.eye-bee-m.com> wrote in message news:bpduip$3p2$1_at_hanover.torolab.ibm.com...
> Joe "Nuke Me Xemu" Foster wrote:
>
> > "Paul Vernon" <paul.vernon_at_ukk.ibmm.comm> wrote in message
<news:bpdpuh$1v88$1_at_gazette.almaden.ibm.com>...
> >
> >
> >>Sniped in and bold added:
> >>
> >> your *client program* opens the *cursor* and *iterates*
> >
> >
> > Fine, then define sendmail() to take one or more relations
> > as arguments and let /it/ do any iterating:
> >
> > sendmail(select address from harvestedlist, "MAKE MONEY FAST!!!")
> >
> > I suppose that if we can only push iteration down deep enough,
> > it goes away entirely?
> >
> Ah, OK. Now what if I want to reuse the result of the sendmail function?
> Let's say to validate the email wasn't bounced (or least not malformed).
> What you have now is a sendmail relational operator :-)

I note that at least one (occasional) contributor to this group would rather not see any domain operators in the relational model.

> A note to Mikito:
> SQL was originally SEQUEL: Structured ENGLISH query language.
> And no, I'm not a native English speaker ...
> To fetch the LAST 5 ROWS ONLY one simply flips the ORDER BY :-)
> I have never seen a request to get the MIDDLE outside of TPC-C.

but wouldn't orthogonality demand it, just as it would demand that you could return both the first 5 *and* the last 5. I mean, customers should not be the be all and the end all. Customers are not all seeing and all knowing. Usually they don't see very far at all, and as such they are probably correct. A single customer carefully planning for the long term can very often be put out of business by the short term focused competition. My question is, can vendors escape (if only partially or relatively) from that problem? I guess that a vendor suffers the aggregation of their customers position, aggravated by the fact that customers shout louder about short term issues than long term ones (if they shout about those at all). Maybe it is even more difficult for a vendor to look long term than a customer. Intuition suggests otherwise (the benefits of long term are multiplied), but I guess that the immediacy of the short term is even more tempting.

Maybe the solution is the same as in other game theory problems. Candy now, or 10 times more later. Logic might dictate that the rational solution is to have patience and wait until the long term reward arrives, but our 6 year old emotions cannot resist snatching the candy infront of our noses. Do we simply not have to grow up a little. OK, take the candy if the future is so discounted at you may not be around to take the lump sum. But, unless you can see that you'll go bankrupt before the long term arrives, find a bit of self control and wait for the really big riches...

Now all that is a question for economic (and related) theories. Maybe we need a comp.databases.theory.economics

Regards
Paul Vernon
Business Intelligence, IBM Global Services Received on Tue Nov 18 2003 - 23:18:04 CET