Re: Dreaming About Redesigning SQL

Jan Hidders <jan.hidders_at_pandora.be.REMOVE.THIS> wrote in message news:<3f840936.0_at_news.ruca.ua.ac.be>...
> Paul G. Brown wrote:
> >
> > Erm . .
> >
> > What's 'physical' about this?
> >
> > RELATION Dept ( Id Dept_Id KEY, Name String ); [....]
>
> Absolutely nothing, of course, and just about any expert on database
> theory (people who had several publications on PODS, ICDT, et cetera)
> that I talked to about this agrees with you on this. In fact, I also
> talked to some logicians (you know, people who actually know about what
> is logical and what is not, :-)) about this question, and their answer
> was that from their point of view it was in fact the String-part that
> was less logical. This is not easy to explain in a few sentences

[...]

  Little worth knowing is.

[...]

> So am I arguing that we should only use abstract values in the columns
> of our relations? Certainly not. What Tarski presents here is a
> simplified model that he uses to understand certain properties of
> logical systems. But what this does tell you is that from a logical
> point of view there is no problem with abstract values and in some sense
> they can even be regarded as more fundamental than concrete values.

   I think I grok the principles supporting 'abstract' types. I've not   read the Tarski but in my earnest youth I railed against REF/DEREF for   all of the 'right reasons' until it was pointed out to me that databases   routinely store filenames and then reason about the filenames perfectly   happily thank you very much and filenames are just references so would   I please just shut up, OK?

   But I still can't swallow the syntax.

    KR

     
            Pb