Re: Extending my question. Was: The relational model and relational algebra - why did SQL become the industry standard?

"Jan Hidders" <jan.hidders_at_REMOVE.THIS.ua.ac.be> wrote in message news:3e6ccb28.0_at_news.ruca.ua.ac.be...
> Bob Badour wrote:
> >
> >If you don't mind, I will offer Lauri a little help on this one.
>
> If you think he needs it, by all means.

I don't, but that never stopped me in the past.

> >From dictionary.com: [...definition snipped...]
> >
> >A while loop leaves out of consideration several underlying comparison
and
> >branching operations as well as branching destinations so as to attend to
> >the overall operation of repeating a given sequence of steps.
> >
> >A goto statement is a direct encoding of an unconditional branch as one
> >might use in conjunction with comparison operations and conditional
branches
> >to implement a similar repetition.
>
> Let's see. With GOTOs:
>
> 1100 IF NOT(<condition>) THEN GOTO 1210
> ...
> 1200 GOTO 1100
> 1210 ..
>
> With WHILEs:
>
> WHILE <condition> DO
> ...
> END WHILE
>
> So those "several underlying comparison and branching operations" you talk
> about are exactly *two* operations.

I count at least three. Comparison. Conditional branch. Unconditional branch.

> That's not a lot of abstraction.

So? One is greater than zero by one. That's what makes me think it is the larger of the two values.

Would you like to participate in some meaningful way now? Or would you like to continue wasting time?

> Certainly
> not comparable to the kind of abstraction that can be obtained with
> functions or classes

So? Do you have a point? You asked him what makes him think it is a higher level of abstraction. It is a higher level of abstraction.

> And since the remark was made in the context of
> query optimization that should be the amount of abstraction we were
talking
> about when using words like "raising the level of abstraction".

I disagree. Received on Tue Mar 11 2003 - 04:01:47 CET