Re: An object-oriented network DBMS from relational DBMS point of view

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 03:21:37 GMT
Message-ID: <5Z2Kh.10607$PV3.108371@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>

JXStern wrote:

> On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:12:59 GMT, Bob Badour
> <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>

>>JXStern wrote:
>>
>>>On 12 Mar 2007 10:43:17 -0700, "Dmitry Shuklin" <shuklin_at_bk.ru> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>That's not news, that an unconstrained description has constrained
>>>>>grammers as a subset, that type 0 grammar has type 1,2,3 grammars as
>>>>>"special cases", but the general case does not have some of the
>>>>>properties of its simplified, special cases.  
>>>>
>>>>Agree. But if some system allows to implement type 0 grammar then also
>>>>it allow implement constrants and emulate type 1,2,3 grammars but not
>>>>vice versa.
>>>
>>>Well, I don't know.
>>>
>>>The value of an RDBMS is that it holds ALL the data.
>>
>>I don't necessarily agree with that. Some of the worst atrocities I have 
>>seen come from naive designers thinking normalization involves sticking 
>>every piece of text imaginable into some sort of lookup table.
>>
>>Then again, I would like to see a lot more managed data handled by a 
>>dbms. The key to that is extending the system to everywhere one needs to 
>>manage data.

>
> I didn't expect the negative feedback on this, I find it interesting.
> When I say, "all the data", what I mean is that the relational model
> makes all the data in the database accessible homogenously, not that
> it has to have my Macdonald's receipts listed somewhere! I do
> understand the confusion, heterogenous data access is a long-time
> favorite topic, especially with Bill Gates, going back to "NT5 Cairo"
> and other misbegotten, lost initiatives. Anyway, when Dmitry proposes
> islands of relational data in a larger storage engine, I'm just
> pointing out that this misses out on one of the main motivators of
> RDBMS. It may still be useful, but has no unifying concept.
>
>

>>>I'm interested in extensions to the relational model and SQL (or query
>>>language better than SQL), in the general direction of OO languges,
>>>but it is the constraint on storage and the cannonical forms that make
>>>RDBMS work, and just tacking on some swizzled spaghetti storage may
>>>have its place, but it's really mixing apples and oranges, I don't see
>>>that it enlightens either side.
>>
>>When you say "in the direction of OO languages", what specific features 
>>of OO languages do you desire?

>
> Well, now that you ask, with a more detailed knowledge of SQL it seems
> ever-less important. As I said, the specialization of OO can be done
> with foreign keys, but it might be nice to have the alternative
> syntax. Might be nice to have methods local to tables, and resolving
> up some hierarchical arrangement of tables.

What would it mean for a method to be local to a table? How does that differ from just a stored procedure?

   Of course it's nice to
> have a full procedural language with SQL integrated, which PL/SQL has
> only had for twenty years, but having Java or .Net applets is nice and
> more OO.

But why on earth would anyone want more OO when one could have more relational instead?

   Whether it is good or bad to have object classes as opaque
> user-defined datatypes, I guess I can argue either way.
>
> J.
>
Received on Wed Mar 14 2007 - 22:21:37 CDT