[Mpls-pm] Useful prolog

Dave Rolsky autarch at urth.org
Thu Jan 12 16:03:06 PST 2006


On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Ken Williams wrote:

> I haven't used prolog much myself, but I agree that it's very nice to
> write something descriptively rather than algorithmically whenever
> possible.

I think the general concept of a declarative programming language is very 
powerful. One of the goal of a truly relational DBMS would be to be able 
to describe all the constraints, and all queries, in the most purely 
declarative fashion possible. Then the DBMS is supposed to figure out the 
best way to do the "how" under the hood.

SQL falls short of this in numerous cases, notably in its weak support for 
constraints, which is why people end up writing procedural triggers 
instead. I touched on this a little bit in my last lightning talk.


-dave

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