Re: By The Dawn's Normal Light

"Paul" <paul_at_test.com> wrote in message news:417c0a93$0$80702$ed2619ec_at_ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net...
> Dawn M. Wolthuis wrote:
> >>I don't see the problem really, don't we all understand and agree what
> >>internal structure means? I think the key point of the definition is
> >>that atomicity is always with respect to a system rather than an
> >>absolute concept.
> >
> > As soon as you have an extensible system, what does it matter whether
there
> > is a function to split out a date into parts today if we could write one
to
> > grab the month out tomorrow? --dawn
>
> Well, the system that is the relational engine isn't extensible. The
> extensible part is the type engine (assuming the DBMS allows people to
> define their own domains). I guess you're right that the atomicity of a
> value w.r.t. the type engine could be changed, but I don't think this
> isn't really where atomicity of values is such a useful concept.
>
> The main purpose of introducing the idea of atomic values is when seen
> through the relational engine in particular.

I'll admit to complete ignorance on what is implemented where and how. I'm thinking only at the logical level and not related to implemented components. Is there a name for the run-time environment for the database or is it both of these? Can you give a quick summary of what constitutes the relational engine and what is in the type engine? I googled quickly and decided to just ask -- I hope you don't mind. --dawn Received on Sun Oct 24 2004 - 22:14:01 CEST