Re: Functions in the relational context

On Mar 6, 7:14 pm, "Yagotta B. Kidding" <y..._at_mymail.com> wrote:
> FP is a specific programming toolset usually described as having features
> like higher-order functions (functions accepting other functions as
> arguments),

Again, I'm very conservative, so let's go through your post line-by- line.

Callbacks? Again this is a rare feature, and rare features don't define language success.

> no side effects/ref transparency,

No side effects it is a protection/defence feature. I suggest that it doesn't elevate the programming level.

ref transparency: to what extent java references are transparent or not?

> For ideas on how FP can be applied to data management,  seehttp://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/474871.html.

This (the referenced PhD thesis, to be more precise) was quite an overwhelming read. However, it seems to emphasise category theory methods, while lambda calculus is barely mentioned. The query optimization part is quite ambitious, not only he covers grouping, aggregation, query unnesting, but he even includes complex datatypes and OQL! Knowing how challenging laying down theoretical framework for optimisation of even simple select-project-join makes me highly suspicious. Query transformations are based on heuristic rules like push-select-through-project. Does he indicate that he get's these axioms for free by just leveraging category theory framework? (This is a rethoric question: no matter how abstract your framework is, some low level work streamlining the underlying algebra and identifying its axioms has to be done. ) Received on Fri Mar 07 2008 - 20:18:58 CET