Re: The fable of DEMETRIUS, CONSTRAINTICUS, and AUTOMATICUS

Marshall Spight wrote:

> "Kenneth Downs" <firstinit.lastname_at_lastnameplusfam.net> wrote in message
> news:jma9lc.ner.ln_at_mercury.downsfam.net...

>>
>> Code is recipes.  They tell you what to do and you store them in a filing
>> cabinet.  Data is food, like flour and pies, you store them in the pantry
>> and the refrigerator.  When this distinction is not understood, you get
>> paper in the fridge and flour in the filing cabinet.

I would contend that it is never appropriate to consider SQL code to be data, it simply is not.

Code is data when you get down to certain levels, yes, like bytecode, and food is paper when you get down to carbon and nitrogen. But again I contend that when implementing database systems or meta-data systems there is only madness in confounding code and data.

>
>

>> Or another example.  I can do this:
>>
>> CREATE VIEW new_columns AS
>> SELECT column_id FROM dd_columns
>>   WHERE column_id_existing IS NULL
>>
>> but I cannot do this:
>>
>> SELECT features FROM file:///BigBunchOfDDL.SQL
>>   WHERE Columns ARE Numeric
>>     AND columns HAVE Constraints

the FROM clause is a disk file full of SQL statements, or perhaps if you like Java or C#. You cannot query this information with SQL, because it is not in tables. Moreover, it is of a fundamentally different nature and does not even contain the same kind of information.

-- 
Kenneth Downs
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