With all due respect, Dawn, you are an idiot. "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Good question. Although I would want to move away from relational > databases too, if there is an RDBMS and one wants to query it, what > would I aim for? If you look at XQuery, you will see an example of > what I would definitely NOT aim for. Although the user of such a > language might very well be a technical person, instead of starting > with mathematics (relational calculus, relational algebra) I would > suggest starting with language. The mathematics of language is more > complex than the mathematics of relations, particularly simple > relations (such as 1NF tables). > > If you look at the history of data persistence prior to Codd's 1970 > ACM paper, you will see several attempts at this. One I have studied > of late is GIRLS (Generalized Information Retrieval Language and > System), specified by Don Nelson and implemented by several folks with > the most famous being Dick Pick. This GIRLS language was specified a > full 40 years ago and lives today in many IT shops under a variety of > about 10 different names, including IBM's UniQuery and Retrieve (for > UniData and Universe respectively). This language is flawed, as are > all, but so very close to what I would think would be a good approach. > It was written at TRW in order to make it so that the military in > Viet Nam could query their data without technical folks in the field. > It went into production in 1969 with the US Army. Prior to the end of > the cold war, it was used by the CIA to track (the associated > database) and query about Russion spies in the US. > > I would suggest ditching the entire relational model (as both overly > simplistic in its theory and overly complex in its implementation) and > start with English (that is one of the other names for the GIRLS > language). Note that language is also the starting point for putting > data in XML documents, but it sure doesn't seem to be the starting > point for XQuery, eh? > > --dawn > Dawn M. Wolthuis > www.tincat-group.com
---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
