Re: Does Codd's view of a relational database differ from that ofDate&Darwin?[M.Gittens]
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 13:27:56 GMT
Message-ID: <wZcve.129864$Id2.7086132_at_phobos.telenet-ops.be>
Jon Heggland wrote:
> In article <8L2ve.129452$Qy4.7039020_at_phobos.telenet-ops.be>,
> jan.hidders_at_REMOVETHIS.pandora.be says...
>
>>Well, even for an anecdote it's a bit light on information. Basically >>all I know now is that someone with better qualifications than you said >>something that you apparently very much disagreed with. [...]>
>
> Yes, except (as I forgot to say) that 'the name' changed 'its' mind
> after reading the other two reviews of the paper.
Ok. That is indeed interesting.
> The reason I am light
> on information is that I am not sure about the ethics of giving the
> names of the people involved. Or details of the paper, for that matter.
Actually you already stepped the line a bit. Telling us any more would be clearly over it.
> But never mind. My point was just that even respected scientists may be
> blind to the reinvention of wheels, especially if the technology names
> are changed and steeped in hype.
Oh yeah. No doubt about that.
>>>So it is a renaissance of the network model? >> >>Well, if you want to call it that. But as I said, that name has all >>kinds of connotations that would not be justified. The data model would >>be more expressive. The constraint language would be very different. The >>query language would be very different. The update language would be >>very different. View definitions would be different. The way that >>queries would be optimized would be very different. Concurrency control >>would be different. These are not trivial things. They matter.
>
> Of course they matter. I'm just wondering why all this would be
> different. Just the advent of new and better brains since the
> sixties/seventies, or other developments of computer science?
The progress of science. We now know more and understand certain problems better.
>>>Ok ... but I though half the point of OODBs was to lessen the "impedance >>>mismatch" between procedural OO programming languages and declarative >>>databases (by making the databases less declarative). What is the >>>motivation now? >> >>I'm not sure I understand. Whose motivation? For what?
>
> The motivation for studying network databases under a new name, even
> with different languages.
It provides you with a higher-level data model. Moreover, it has slowly begun to dawn on people that the big advantages of the relational model (simplicity, formal basis, data-independence, declarativity, etc.) are actually also easiliy achieved in other data models. There's nothing special about the relational model in that respect.
- Jan Hidders