History of transitive closure queries

From: Norbert_Paul <norbertpauls_spambin_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 11:21:39 +0200
Message-ID: <ku2cb3$26j$1_at_dont-email.me>

Currently SQL supports transitive closure computation with its WITH RECURSIVE clauses. I know that previous RDBMS systems had other more idiosncratic means to compute the transitive closure of a relation.

My questions are:

(1) What were the historically first RDBMS on the market which

     used SQL and had /any/ facility to compute the transitive
     closure of a relation by /one/ SQL query? (Of course you can
     always write a program that repeatedly queries the DB until
     the transitive closure is completed)


(2) When was WITH RECURSIVE first introduced into SQL? I know


     it is present in SQL 2003.

Thanks in advance
Norbert Received on Fri Aug 09 2013 - 11:21:39 CEST