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From: marti@ethz.UUCP (Robert Marti)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Quality of Oracle Doc
Message-ID: <200@bernina.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Sep-87 11:35:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: bernina.200
Posted: Sat Sep 12 11:35:52 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Sep-87 01:47:27 EDT
References: <195@bernina.UUCP> <325@oracle.UUCP>
Organization: ETH Zuerich, Switzerland
Lines: 47

In article <325@oracle.UUCP>, bradbury@oracle.UUCP (Robert Bradbury) writes:
> One should not draw parallels between code quality and documentation
> quality in any organization.  They are almost always done by different
> groups with different managers (in organizations with any size).

Agreed.  Still, technical people tend to look at the documentation first,
so it should be at least passable.  Then again, technical people are not
always the ones who decide which product is bought ...


> As a general recomendation people planning to interface from a
> programming language to a RDBMS should use the embedded SQL
> syntax which is documented in the ANSI X3H2 SQL standard.

I don't think embedded SQL in particular or pre-compilation in general
is a very good idea.  But even if I did, who offers an embedded pre-compiler
for Modula-2 -- or CLU, CommonLISP, Prolog, Smalltalk-80, for that matter?


> Using a function call interface locks you into one vendors product.

We plan to define our own call interface and build a thin veneer which
maps the vendors interface to ours so this problem is minimized.
Besides, portability is not that much of an issue in a research
product.  (If it were, we'd use C instead of Modula-2 ...)


> ...  Such [low-level] interfaces are
> likely to violate Codd's "Nonsubversion" rule and therefore
> disqualify the product as a "relational" DBMS.

I have a high regard for Ted Codd and his achievements in the database
field.  All the same, I am more interested if a product meets my
requirements than whether it is truly relational or not.  In fact,
we built a research "RDBMS" with referential integrity before
Codd coined the term in eqrly 1979.  (We called the concept "dynamic
domain" at the time.)

> Robert Bradbury
> Oracle Corporation
> (206) 364-1442                            hplabs!oracle!bradbury

-- 
Robert Marti                    Phone:       +41 1 256 52 36
Institut fur Informatik
ETH Zentrum/SOT                 CSNET/ARPA:  marti%ifi.ethz.ch@relay.cs.net
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