[sf-perl] "Database in Depth", by C.J. Date

David Fetter david at fetter.org
Wed Jun 1 15:33:35 PDT 2005


On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 09:37:21PM -0700, Rich Morin wrote:
> I recently received a copy of
> 
>    "Database in Depth: Relational Theory for Practitioners"
>    C.J. Date, O'Reilly, 2005
> 
> This slim volume looks quite tasty to me (though I'm definitely NOT
> an RDBMS expert).  Perhaps some of the DB wonks on the list should
> take a look and let the rest of us know what they think!

I'd like to see it.

While Date doesn't fill the doctrinaire role in RDBMS theory that RMS
does for FLOSS (Fabian Pascal http://www.dbdebunk.com/index.html does
that ;) he does have some keen insights into what RDBMSs *should* do
according to his view of RDBMS theory.

Because of the initial implementations and hence people's usage
habits, SQL is unlikely ever to implement relational algebra and
relational calculus as originally formulated by E. F. Codd (R.I.P.)
and C. J. Date (the author).  For example, relational algebra, as far
as I can tell, disallows NULLs, which means that any entity which is
now represented as a table with m non-NULLable columns and n NULLable
columns would have to be represented as n+1 tables.

Well, that's my inflation-adjusted $.03 :)

Cheers,
D
-- 
David Fetter david at fetter.org http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 510 893 6100   mobile: +1 415 235 3778

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