On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 09:18:17AM -0600, Scott Ribe wrote:
> > What say we just stop right there and call Date's Relational Model
> > what it is: a silly edifice built atop wrong premises.
>
> SQL was a quick and dirty hack (Systems R and R* needed some way to
> interface with data) with multiple deficiencies recognized and
> documented right within the very first paper by its own authors.
Perfection isn't a human attribute. There isn't a whole lot of
convincing evidence that it's a divine attribute. Did you have a
point to make?
> To hold it up as any kind of paradigm is really misinformed.
SQL had something that relational algebra/relational calculus did not
have, which is that somebody without a math degree can stare at it a
short while and *do* something with it right away. That it also has
other properties that are extremely useful and powerful (the ability
to specify states of ignorance using NULL, do arithmetic, use
aggregates, etc.) is what has made it such a smashing success.
Now, there's another thing that makes it amazingly hard to displace:
imagining what would be better *enough* to justify the many millions
of people-years and even more billions of dollars needed to move away
from it. Despite Date's many whines over the decades, his
still-vaporware Relational Model doesn't even vaguely approximate that
criterion.
Cheers,
D
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666
Skype: davidfetter
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