Re: An Analogy ?

Kenneth Downs <firstinit.lastname_at_lastnameplusfam.net> wrote in message news:<kad462-uov.ln1_at_pluto.downsfam.net>...
> Tony Douglas wrote:
>
> > Here's a Monday morning throw-at-the-wall post for everyone !
> >
> > Reading some of the recent posts, I got around to thinking about
> > FORTRAN and SQL as analgous to each other. In both cases, they were
> > essentially experiments to show that something could be done (in
> > FORTRAN's case, that a compiler could produce executables almost as
> > efficient as hand-written assembler code, in SQL's case as part of an
> > experiment to show that a "relational" system could work). In both
> > cases, special cases and "clever" workarounds to problems to allow the
> > experiment to work became embedded in the experiment (e.g. the close
> > tie-in between FORTRAN's control structures and the IBM mainframe
> > model it was originally built on).
> >
> > And, I would go on to suggest, both experiments have outlived their
> > genuine usefulness and served to impede progress in their respective
> > areas (that is, we're still stuck with FORTRAN 9x and SQL:2003).
> >
> > Any thoughts, anyone ?
> >
> > - Tony
>
> Well, if somebody were to produce a better relational query language
> tommorrow, the commercial vendors could implement it as an alternate
> interface to the data, without in any way touching their current SQL
> implementations.

isn't that what DataPhor(sp?) is said to do??

 In fact, presumably it would generate the same execution
> plans.
Received on Tue Nov 09 2004 - 04:39:07 CET