Re: Proper relational database?

> owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of Eric Schwarzenbach

> >> If I had a few $million to spend in a philanthropical manner, I would
> >> hire some of the best PG devs to develop a proper relational database
> server.
> >> Probably a query language that expressed the relational algebra in a
> >> scheme-like syntax, and the storage model would be properly
> >> relational (eg no duplicate rows).

If there were someone to pay the bills, would you work on it?

> >> It's an enormous tragedy that all the development effort that has
> >> gone into NoSQL database has pretty much all gotten it wrong: by all
> >> means throw out SQL, but not the relational model with it. They're
> >> all just rehashing the debate over hierarchical storage from the 70s.
> >> Comp Sci courses should feature a history class.
> >>
> >> It's a bit odd to me that someone isn't working on such a thing.

Several people are, but without the few $million...

> > Well when IBM were first developing relational databases there were
> > two different teams. One in California which produced System-R which
> > became what we now know as DB2 and spawned SQL, and the other in
> > Peterlee in the UK which was called PRTV (the Peterlee Relational Test
> > Vehicle). PRTV rather died but bits of it survived.

And many of the people who worked on it are still around.

> > According to the Wikipedia page it did have a language (ISBL) but from
> > what I recall (and it was nearly 40 years ago) there were a series of
> > PL/1 function calls we used rather than encoding the request as a
> > string as SQL systems require.

Ditto. Including Hugh Darwen.

> One of the people involved in that was Hugh Darwen, who is one of the authors
> of The Third Manifesto, which is an attempt to define what a properly
> relational language and system should look like. So you could say the
> experience of ISBL vs SQL has been folded into that effort.

See http://www.thethirdmanifesto.com/.

Hugh worked for some years for IBM on the SQL Committee, but eventually left over a major disagreement in direction. TTM is based on the work he's done since (with Chris Date). Andl derives from that.

I would say that very little of PRTV/ISBL experience was added to SQL once it had been standardised, even with Hugh doing his best.

Regards
David M Bennett FACS

Andl - A New Database Language - andl.org