Re: Concurrency in an RDB

On 2006-12-27, paul c wrote:

> What possible reason would one have to apply relational operators to
> strings, at least strings as most humans would read or write them?

I can't see any. But I also read this as a shortcoming of the relational model.

We do have a number of operations on strings and also full-fledged running prose which are practically important, but which haven't yet been neatly included in the relational model of data. Say, the equivalence between a low level string-of-characters representation, and a fully parsed, hierarchical, more annotated, "more semantic" one. Apparently there's something about text and/or strings which isn't straightforwardly amenable to relational treatment.

Given the current, practical importance of both running text and the RM, I wonder why a) there haven't been any genuine attempts at treating strings, text and language in general in relational terms, or b) why the RM folks won't confess it can't be done, given the current state of knowledge, thereby acknowledging that there is data that just isn't currently amenable to relational treatment.

-- 
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy_at_iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
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