Re: Functions in the relational context

On Mar 6, 12:45 pm, "Yagotta B. Kidding" <y..._at_mymail.com> wrote:
> I do not see how your exercise,  whilst no doubt cute,  discredits the
> idea that FP can be fruitfully applied to the data management field.  

To explore this in any depth, let's clarify what FP is. The function is considered as a data? I fail to see why this idea is significant. Care to support it with an example?

> Care to provide the missing link/s in your logical chain, like,  'in the
> RA we can do such and so,  but in FP we cannot,  therefore, FP is really
> no good'.  

Well, we are not talking completenes, are we? Certainly, in RA we can't express certain things that even primitive procedural language can do, yet we agree that algebraic approach is a good idea.

> Besides,  on its face, the exercise is not really relevant to
> the RA data management.  Are you talking about something like constraint
> databases where you operate with formulas rather than data ?

I'm not certain where this observation leads to. Combined with an idea that function composition is nothing more than a relational join, the intuition might be that an extension of the relational model don't necessarily require functional programming ideas. Received on Thu Mar 06 2008 - 22:45:22 CET