Re: deductive databases

From: mAsterdam <mAsterdam_at_vrijdag.org>
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 10:53:06 +0200
Message-ID: <42870df1$0$64598$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>

mountain man wrote:
> mAsterdam wrote:

>>mountain man wrote:
>>[snip "recursion useful to solve part explosion problems"]
>>
>>>In fact there are literally hundreds of alternative work-
>>>arounds to this type of problem without involving
>>>any form of esoteric generalised recursion theory.
>>
>><delurk>
>>
>>Just curious:
>>What is esoteric about it?
>>Or: What makes you look for alternatives?
>>>...
>>>If you relied upon theory you'd have a problem.
>>>Fortunately there are viable practice-based
>>>alternatives in SQL.

>
> In my case practice based alternatives were engineered
> for many years before I became aware that generalised and
> theoretical treatments of the problem were being considered.
>
> So its not that I went looking for alternatives, rather that in
> the early days I was not aware of any recursion theory.
>
> IMO there are at least 2 roads
> to database systems theory:
> the road of theory and
> the road of practice.

The users of roman numbers could do
very well without 0 - at least that's
what their generations thought.
I suspect that in the early days of the change to arab numbers they looked on 0 as being of value, albeit theoretical.

Programming languages did put recursion
on their practical road back in the 1960's. Received on Sun May 15 2005 - 03:53:06 CDT