Re: Distributivity in Tropashko's Lattice Algebra

vc wrote:
> Marshall Spight wrote:
>
> OK, I see. Notation is unimportant at this stage. Some remarks:
>
> 1. You of course know that a simple function application to the
> columns in the select clause would give you the same result.

Yes. However, what I'm trying to work towards is a minimal algebra. Small size makes for simple code, and simple semantics.

> 2. If you'd like to get rid of the select clause and use join, than we
> are back to the problem of infinite relations since our function is
> materialized in the hypothetical database as a relation (unless you can
> suggest another way of implementing the join).

If the join's operands have enough attributes in common, then the function can be applied fully at join time. If it doesn't, then we can consider it a partial application. (There may be some pathological edge cases; I have not explored this fully.)

> 3. You may be interested to know that Oracle (as well as MS SQL
> Server) has so-called table functions. The table function behaves as
> if it were a real table. One can say for example "select a,b,c from t1
> join table(f)". If the table(f) cardinality is infinite, the query of
> course will never complete. One can parameterize the "f" function in
> order to make its cardinality finite, but parameterizing won't work in
> general, obviously.

Interesting. Did I read that correctly that "table()" takes a function and converts it to a table? In that case, given that t1 is finite, couldn't we reduce/optimize the execution so that this did complete? Also, if f is not infinite, how is that expressed in the definition of f? (Or am I reading this incorrectly?)

Marshall Received on Tue Aug 16 2005 - 19:01:40 CEST