Re: More on lists and sets

David Cressey wrote:
>
> Isn't a "query language" and a "data sublanguage" essentially the same
> thing?

Not if you define these terms in the way I did: query language = the language that the client uses to retrieve data from the database server, data sublanguage = the language the client uses to manipulate data. So now I hope my definitions match yours. :-)

Of course, from a programmer's point of view there may not be a reason why these should be different, or even that is preferable if they are the same, but in general there are different design considerations here.

> [...] I want a
> transformer that on one side looks like a query, and accepts a result table
> (set), and on the other side looks like a list that can be opened and read
> one element at a time.
>
> Going the other way, I want to be able to build a list, one element at a
> time, and then shove the entire list into a transformer, and have the list
> contents inserted into one of more tables.

I'm still not completely sure what that means. Would that be like wrapping all cursors in an Iterator object? And wrapping calls to inserts into objects that insert a list of tuples at once? Or do you want transparent integration in your programming language?

• Jan Hidders