Re: A good book
From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 00:41:42 GMT
Message-ID: <abDrg.7666$pu3.170797_at_ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>
>
>
> No, you're almost certainly not missing something. Nevertheless, what
> I'm asking for ought to be relatively simple, so I'll try to explain it
> another way.
>
> As is pointed out here several times every five minutes (okay, not that
> often...), database design and programming is rather frequently and
> unfortnuately performed from very little theoretical basis at all. At
> the same time, it's frequently stated that relational databases operate
> on a solid mathematical foundation. That's a useful statement if and
> only if that mathematical foundation provides tools that are useful in
> practice for reasoning about behavior, transformations, correctness,
> etc. of the code written in relational languages. If this connection is
> not made, then all this talk about predicate calculus is pointless. I
> am looking for the sources that explain how this connection is made.
> Are there theorems of relational theory that suggest certain program
> transformations, or certain criteria for correctness? You made a
> comment in another thread that suggested that features added to
> relational databases can be traced back to the mathematical model;
> where's a source that explains how? Although it's not a specialty of
> mine, I have a pretty solid layman's knowledge of systems of logic,
> including predicate calculus, but it's entirely non-obvious to me how
> this would effect my use of or implementation of a database system.
> This is what I'm asking for. Or at least, that's the theoretical part
> of what I'm asking for, which I called (b). The practical part is (a),
> but I imagine it will largely follow from the theoretical understanding.
>
> Hopefully, I've explained why this isn't what I want.
Received on Sat Jul 08 2006 - 02:41:42 CEST
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 00:41:42 GMT
Message-ID: <abDrg.7666$pu3.170797_at_ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>
Chris Smith wrote:
> Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>>Chris Smith wrote: >> >>>I'm suggesting that you've yet to establish the connection between: >>> >>>(a) predicate calculus and elegant code >>>(b) databases and predicate calculus >> >>Relational calculus = 1st order predicate calculus >> >>Am I missing something?
>
>
> No, you're almost certainly not missing something. Nevertheless, what
> I'm asking for ought to be relatively simple, so I'll try to explain it
> another way.
>
> As is pointed out here several times every five minutes (okay, not that
> often...), database design and programming is rather frequently and
> unfortnuately performed from very little theoretical basis at all. At
> the same time, it's frequently stated that relational databases operate
> on a solid mathematical foundation. That's a useful statement if and
> only if that mathematical foundation provides tools that are useful in
> practice for reasoning about behavior, transformations, correctness,
> etc. of the code written in relational languages. If this connection is
> not made, then all this talk about predicate calculus is pointless. I
> am looking for the sources that explain how this connection is made.
> Are there theorems of relational theory that suggest certain program
> transformations, or certain criteria for correctness? You made a
> comment in another thread that suggested that features added to
> relational databases can be traced back to the mathematical model;
> where's a source that explains how? Although it's not a specialty of
> mine, I have a pretty solid layman's knowledge of systems of logic,
> including predicate calculus, but it's entirely non-obvious to me how
> this would effect my use of or implementation of a database system.
> This is what I'm asking for. Or at least, that's the theoretical part
> of what I'm asking for, which I called (b). The practical part is (a),
> but I imagine it will largely follow from the theoretical understanding.
>>Life is too short to go digging for it, but one EWD stands out in regard >>to elegance where EWD provided a proof without iteration for something >>previously proved using iteration. He used it as an example of greater >>elegance.
>
> Hopefully, I've explained why this isn't what I want.
Received on Sat Jul 08 2006 - 02:41:42 CEST