Re: theory and practice: ying and yang

On Wed, 01 Jun 2005 10:53:52 +0200, Alexandr Savinov <savinov_at_host.com> wrote:

>Alfredo Novoa schrieb:
>> Declarative code should be favoured over procedural code.
>
>There exists a permanent fight between declarative and procedural
>approaches (actually modes of thinking).

I disagree.

> In RM declarative approach
>dominates but still is not able to get rid of procedural approach (for
>objective reasons rather than because of "incompetence of practicians"
>or "wrong DBMS design").

It is not able to completely eliminate the procedural code, but we can eliminate the vast majority of it obtaining very big cost savings.

>One major problem of declarative approach is that sets do not exist in
>reality.

An absurd. Sets are as real as procedures.

> Another fundamental problem (as a consequence of the first one)
>is that humans used to think procedurally and in terms of objects,
>arrays etc.

It is the contrary. Non IT people think declaratively in terms of what they want instead of how to compute what they want.

A business manager says: give me a profit report grouped by articles, stores and months. He does not want to know anything about procedures, arrays and iterations.

>> Stored procedures should be used as a last resort to implement
>> business rules.
>
>Hm. Here again it is not so clear. There is an opposite wide spread
>opinion that the best way to design your database consists in
>implementing everything via stored procedures (which then may use SQL or
>other means to access data).

But it is a profoundly uninformed opinion.

Regards Received on Wed Jun 01 2005 - 16:06:18 CEST