At the last SIGMOD conference I heard an anecdote about how Jim Gray had
gained the respect of some of his colleagues by computing the
convex hull of a set of three-dimensional points in a table with a single
SQL query that used only basic SQL (SQL-89). To be a little more concrete,
the input is a relation P(x,y,z) and the output L(x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2) that
describes the minimal set of edges that span the convex hull of the nodes
in P.
Who of the SQL gurus here is as smart as Jim Gray. :-)
Received on Mon Jul 12 2004 - 18:09:51 CDT
