Re: Objects and Relations
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:25:05 GMT
Message-ID: <BlRvh.840090$R63.312187_at_pd7urf1no>
Marshall wrote:
> On Jan 30, 1:13 pm, "JOG" <j..._at_cs.nott.ac.uk> wrote: >
>>On Jan 30, 7:12 pm, "Marshall" <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Jan 30, 10:18 am, "Neo" <neo55..._at_hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>>I wish I had a decent general purpose relational language I could prototype this stuff in. Starting in March I hope to be able to put some decent amount of effort into that. SQL is so clunky!
>>
>>>>So what is a proper relational expression for the string bob?
>>
>>>#:int, c:char
>>>{ (0, 'b'), (1, 'o'), (2, 'b') }
>>
>>>But I would expect a syntactic shortcut so you could just
>>>write:
>>
>>> "bob"
>>
>>>as is customary in a variety of languages.
>>
>>Indeed, and hopefully the OP will recognize how similar this is to the
>>actual contents of the string object itself. I'd also note that while
>>RDBMS are obviously not traditionally setup to handle this sort of
>>thing (in terms of physical implementation and optimization, as
>>opposed to the underlying theory), there is no reason a programming
>>language could not be constructed that represented a string datatype
>>as such.
> > > Yes. I note that often when these kinds of comparisons are made, > they are implicitly made between a non-thread-safe, non-transactional > array, and a rowstore with full transactional semantics. > > I can imagine a use for a non-thread-safe, non-transactional > relation; this would be a better comparison. > > > Marshall >
There is a big difference between an engine that implements a theory slavishly by re-iterating the theory and one that merely obeys or satisfies the results a theory dictates. For example, one could say that traditional cpu's don't implement arithmetic as people normally practise it, for example division, nevertheless we are usually satisfied that they obey most of the traditional arithmetic theory.
Apart from that, I think it is a great trap (and a disservice) to give even the slightest impression that the computer is perceiving any manipulation or result it has been programmed with in the same way that people would perceive it, for example, an ordinary email list or a person's name.
p Received on Wed Jan 31 2007 - 01:25:05 CET