Re: Annual Oracle World Database Survey

Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_exxesolutions.com> wrote in message news:<1063152638.892449_at_yasure>...
> Response interspersed.
>
> Joel Garry wrote:
>
> >As one who has had to switch among several languages an hour at times,
> >I'd say you are underestimating switching costs. The steeper the
> >learning curve of the language, the larger the costs. And if the
> >languages are too close, there's confusion costs.
> >
> Methinks you misunderstood my point. It was not that the programmer
> needs to learn more languages ... but rather the compilers. That way
> programmers would need to learn fewer. For example Oracle's compiler can
> handle
>
> SELECT 'A' || 'B' FROM dual;
> it can also handle
> SELECT CONCAT(''A','B') FROM dual;
>
> So why shouldn't be equally able to handle:
>
> END IF and ENDIF and FI? Why not IF }?
>
> From a technical standpoint, I don't think there is one.

As long as there is a one-to-one, that is trivial. lint-like programs and prettifiers and even whatever-to-c translators have done that forever. I even wrote one for t-sql to sqlplus once - given that any SP's and their logic would have to be done manually.

Where trivial translation breaks down is things that work differently in addressing the SQL engine - does the language implicitly load multiple buffers? Are there implicit commits? SP's? Many-to-one verb equivalencies? Load db-specifics on top of that and you get a real mess. The higher-level the language, the bigger the mess - but the more likely it can be made to be cross-db.

>
> >
> >
> >>Hey, hey! It is *my* fantasy! Sheez... ;-)
> >>
> >>Simply put Daniel, there's a lot very good features in the OO Pascal
> >>language that Delphi implements. I would love to have some of the same
> >>features in PL/SQL. It will enable me to do things much better and
> >>cleaner using PL/SQL. Especially on the OO side and abstracting the
> >>basic SQL layer. And no, Java does not do it for me. (after using
> >>Pascal for almost two decades on everything from mainframes to PC's
> >>what do you expect ;-)
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Gold plate that man's lead pipe, and call it a sceptre! :-)
> >
> >(Even though, through strange quirks of fate, I've never done
> >Pascal...)
> >
> >jg
> >--
> >@home.com is bogus.
> >"...very bad day, please don't take my picture." - REM
> >
> >
> Personally I think Pascal was a much better language than C. The problem
> was that it was evangelized by Phillipe Kahn rather than Bill Gates.

For application programming, it's hard _not_ to be much better than C.  It's only advantage is the large number of students that have had to learn it. And that is it's disadvantage, since it was not designed for application programming. So who evangelized it? String 'em up! (ooh, what a lousy pun!)

jg

--
@home.com is bogus.
"Whenever you see a spike in self-employment in this kind of economy,
you know that is involuntary entrepreneurship" - Jared Bernstein