Re: MERGE as the imperative form of aggregation

From: paul c <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac>
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:47:17 GMT
Message-ID: <F9SUh.84028$6m4.36297@pd7urf1no>

Marshall wrote:
> On Apr 16, 6:57 am, paul c <toledobythe..._at_oohay.ac> wrote:
>

>>By the way, I don't think assignment is necessary, therefore it's not
>>primitive.  But I have no idea whether it's primative!

>
>
> As a quick aside, what is primitive or not is a matter of design.
> No operation is or is not fundamentally primitive; it depends
> on the system that operator is embedded in.
>
> Relational assignment could be the only imperative operation
> supported, and insert and delete could be defined in terms of
> it. In which case, assignment is primitive, and insert and delete
> aren't. It is equally the case that insert and delete could be
> the only imperative operations supported, and assignment
> could be defined in terms of them, in which case assignment
> is not primitive and insert/delete are.
> ...

I'm curious to see such a definition.

p Received on Mon Apr 16 2007 - 16:47:17 CDT