Abstract Data Types

In the article Thirty Years of Relational: Extending the Relational Model by C.J. Date, Date talks about ADTs. What does he mean by abstract data types in the context of the relational model?

"But this claim is absurd! As Hugh Darwen and I have shown in The Third Manifesto,2 object functionality and the relational model are completely orthogonal to one another. To quote: "The relational model needs no extension, no correction, no subsumption, and above all no perversion, in order [to support object functionality]." All that's needed is to support relational domains properly (which SQL never did), recognizing those domains for what they are, which is basically just abstract data types (ADTs), With All That That Entails. In other words, the so-called O/R model is just the relational model, pure and simple; there aren't any (genuine) "relational model extensions" involved at all."

http://www.intelligententerprise.com/db_area/archives/1999/990106/online1.shtml

Robert Schiller Received on Sat Apr 21 2001 - 15:35:17 CEST