Greetings,
The paper "The Third-Generation Database System Manifesto" written by The
Committee for Advanced DBMS Function (1990) a set of specifications were
documented as being required for a DBS to be considered truly 3rd generation.
Specifically a 3rd generation DBS had to:
- Support object and relational operations including
inheritance and "Multiple inheritances are essential"
thus the constructed DBs inheritance hierarchy would
be directed graphs
- Provide additional type constructors e.g.:
- an abstract data type system to construct new base types
- an array type constructor
- a sequence type constructor
- a record type constructor
- a set type constructor
- functions as a type
- a union type constructor
- recursive composition of the above constructors
- Allow rules, functions and operations to be
implement in a 4GL
- Must subsume second generation DBS abilities:
- Non procedural query language with query optimizer
- Provide a rules system
- Full SQL client/server support
- Support for views
- Must undo any hard coded requirement for UIDs
and discourage navigation
- Must provide support for 4GLs
- Must support distributed databases, and
- Must (essentially) automatically tune the system to
perform efficient data management
The questions are:
- Do you agree that the above list accurately describes the requirements
for a true 3rd generation database? (if not what is missing or what is
incorrect?)
- Is there a current database system that meets these requirements?
I am aware of the Hugh Darwen & Chris Date's 1995 paper "The Third
Manifesto" which argues a number of the points above. But, I wanted to
center the discussion on the original paper and move forward from there.
Feel free to counter with your views between the two papers.
Cheers,
Scottie
Received on Thu Apr 15 2004 - 13:50:17 CDT
