Re: formal (theoretical) treatment of database indices

I understand what you mean by political issues surrounding datamodels, and who the officials are. Even with my limited knowledge I actually understand the importance of the relational model. My curiosity regarding the role of indexes is how to develop a (or find an existing) theory that is 'orthogonal' to the relational model. In some ways, the theories of types (and programming language semantics in general) can be combined with the relational model to allow formal studies of both individually, as well as when combined.

We have disk drives, memories, caches, etc. There must be a way to create a bridge between the relational model and physical storage. I can imagine that if a formal datamodel were combined with a formal storage/disk layout/whatever system, we could develop algorithms which could automatically map the data model on to physical storage. Received on Fri Oct 07 2005 - 10:59:06 CEST