Re: Is it possible to build a purely relational database on top of SQL?

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw when rafe_at_cs.mu.oz.au (Ralph Becket) would write:
> Please forgive me if this question is naive/asked every other
> week (to date I've been unable to find an answer on Google.)
>
> My question: is there any reason why a purely relational database
> interface, in the "Third Manifesto" sense of, say, Tutorial D,
> could not be built on top of any existing commercial SQL DBMS?
> That is, could one build a true RDBMS without having to rewrite
> everything from scratch? (Note, I do not require that such
> an interface be expected to work for an arbitrary DB containing
> unpleasantness such as NULLs and duplicate rows etc.)
>
> If this is possible, has it been done? Are there performance
> issues with such an approach?

It has been done, with Alphora's _Dataphor_ product, which apparently supports Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB/2, and other database systems as 'storage devices.'

You'd have to contact the vendor to determine what, if any, performance issues fall out of that.

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