Re: On view updating

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:tju3d.73716$MQ5.3136_at_attbi_s52...

> I dunno. It seems to me that regardless of this distinction, updatable
> views are very useful.
>
> There was a time when I considered a database schema to be
> something unique, but now I see that it is just an interface;
> an API even. In that light, updatable views can be thought
> of as a declarative mapping from one interface to another.
> Given that much of modularity depends on interfaces changing
> rarely if at all, then the ability to define views declaratively
> gives one the ability to specify a per-application interface
> to an underlying interface that is then free (or anyway freer)
> to evolve according to changing business needs.

You got it!

> But mightn't we want a general purpose application language with
relational
> features that was Turing complete? That would necessitate adding something
> beyond the basic relational model, and perhaps adding Prolog is just
> the ticket. Actually, I'd probably add a bunch more things as well.

Yes, but... I think we need to keep in mind the distinction between a DBMS and an application platform.

A product like Oracle blurs this distinction. By supporting all the operations most applications require, and by adding a procedural extension to SQL, they made it possible to create "Oracle Applications". There's value in that, especially given how protable Oracle is. But there's a downside as well. It's not as good a DBMS as it would have been if it not attempted something more ambitious.

I'm curious to know if there is more standard terminology for what I'm calling an "application platform". Received on Mon Sep 20 2004 - 13:20:57 CEST