Re: 4 the FAQ: Are Commercial DBMS Truly Relational?

From: Marshall Spight <mspight_at_dnai.com>
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 00:47:06 GMT
Message-ID: <dE%9d.363785$Fg5.239889_at_attbi_s53>


"Laconic2" <laconic2_at_comcast.net> wrote in message news:UOqdnTl6jvdUt_XcRVn-hw_at_comcast.com...

>

> It's OK to be an absolutist. Until the first time you are wrong. And, if
> you're human, that won't be long.

You need some degree of self-insight to see it, though. This is not always present.

> Hmmm.... SQL as a language suffers from a lot of defects. Aside from the
> conflicts between the SQL data model and the RDM, there are numerous little
> bits of wretched syntax in the language, as a language.

It's just appallingly verbose, don't you think? I compare mathematical notation, (which is probably too brief...) with SQL, and it's quite enlightening.

SELECT a, b, c from T where a > 0 AND b > 0 T{a, b, c | a, b > 0}

> OK, I admit that those parentheses would be hard to type and hard to read,
> and people would probably get more errors.
> Someone could write a UI that helps you get it right...

I think a good syntax is a worthwhile endevour in and of itself. I wouldn't say it's as important as good semantics, but it's probably *almost* as important.

> Also, it might be worthwhile to decide whether SQL is a "data sublanguage"
> or "another programming language".

I say "fah!" to the idea of an embedded sublanguage. In what dreamworld are content-addressibility, transactions, and declarative integrity only useful for the datastore? And as a die-hard static typer, I'm appalled at the idea of embedding a statically-typed language inside another statically typed language in such a way as to prevent any possibility of statically typing the embedded language.

Every time I get an error from JDBC like "Error in SQL syntax: so such column 'CutsomerId' in table 'Customers'" at runtime, I want to retch. Such a construct shouldn't compile.

Marshall Received on Sun Oct 10 2004 - 02:47:06 CEST

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