Re: 4 the Faq: Strengths and Weaknesses of Data Models

"Laconic2" <laconic2_at_comcast.net> wrote in message news:rqydnTZelajNZ_LcRVn-iw_at_comcast.com...
>
> "Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message
> news:BSRbd.252104$D%.145867_at_attbi_s51...
>
> > > It was possible to define a "relation" that would violate 1NF.
> >
> > Argh! You're going to drop something like that and just leave it with
> > no details?! Please be specific. You might have noticed 1NF gets
> > debated here every once in a while. :-) Tell us more.
>
>
> There's really no need for specifics. It's the same issues that have been
> discussed endlessly in here, about "what wrong with tables". Things like
> allowing duplicates unless you declare a primary key constraint.

Oh, okay.

> > > Their DML was really not a PL. In order to do "real programming", you
> > > needed a "real programming language".
> >
> > I guess that's the same choice SQL makes. Every query halts, but you
> > can't express everything you might like to.
>
> Yeah. SQL is really a DML and a DDL. It's really not a programming
> language. Although it's being dragged in that direction, willy nilly, by
> the same people who wanted to call it a "user language" years ago. This
> happens over and over. There was an article in Datamation sometime around
> 1970 with the title "The next 700 programming lanaguages" that used this
> idea as a starting point.

You don't have to add much to SQL to get a Turing-complete language. Maybe just recursive queries would do it.

Anyway, I still think a single unified general purpose PL with data management features would kick ass. Sort of a combination of Haskell, Prolog, SQL, and Java. Ha ha ha! Sounds crazy doesn't it?

Marshall Received on Fri Oct 15 2004 - 18:40:57 CEST