Re: relations aren't types?

"Adrian Kubala" <adrian_at_sixfingeredman.net> wrote in message news:slrnc04jos.r0b.adrian_at_sixfingeredman.net...
> All this stuff
> has to be implemented in SOME language -- if your database language is
> powerful enough to describe all the datastructures users might come up
> with, it can also describe the datastructures which the database is
> founded on.

There's a bit of a problem, though. Application code should not be worried about how data is laid out in memory; it should only have to worry about logical structure. Efficient implementation, on the other hand, is generally very sensitive to how data is laid out in memory.

This is very much a "separation of interface and implementation" issue.

In designing the ideal low-level systems language, one would end up with a language that could be entirely written in terms of itself and still maintain maximum efficiency. In designing the ideal high-level applications language, one would *not* expect it could be written in terms of itself. At least some core would have to be written in a systems language. But I would still expect it to be possible for the code written in that application language to be efficient. (Probably some modest efficiency goals are neccesary for success.)

Marshall Received on Mon Jan 12 2004 - 18:05:22 CET