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

"Ralph Becket" <rafe_at_cs.mu.oz.au> wrote in message news:3638acfd.0407050029.5424e360_at_posting.google.com...
> 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?

It's possible (depending, I guess, on how pure you are about purity), as shown rather neatly by Alphora.

Sniping quotes from http://www.alphora.com/tiern.asp?ID=HIGHLEVEL

    "The Alphora Dataphor Data Access Engine (DAE), part of the Dataphor toolset, is a <i>truly</i> relational database system."

    "The DAE, however, has a "virtual" storage engine that can interface with data from nearly any data source.This open-ended architecture allows the DAE to be placed "on top" of existing DBMSs such as Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server"

Some other quotes to spice things up

    "Over time, SQL deficiencies have impacted the industry deeply, even creating entire markets for products that work around the problems."

    "The Relational Model is the "mathematics of data" and SQL is simply a poor calculator."

    "D4 is not intended to be proprietary, but to serve as an open standard to replace SQL."

> That is, could one build a true RDBMS without having to rewrite
> everything from scratch?

On the other hand, one might argue that in fact it is technically more difficult to build a complete D like environment ontop of a SQL RDBMS, rather than write a D DBMS from scratch. However, it' probably more difficult to get the latter to market.

Regards
Paul Vernon
Business Intelligence, IBM Global Services Received on Mon Jul 05 2004 - 12:48:04 CEST