Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!cornell!rochester!bbn!spdcc!husc6!hscfvax!pavlov
From: pavlov@hscfvax.harvard.edu (G.Pavlov)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: SQL = 4GL ???
Message-ID: <613@hscfvax.harvard.edu>
Date: 24 Aug 88 17:17:16 GMT
References: <24484@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <2389@rtech.rtech.com>
Organization: Health Sciences Computing Facility, Harvard University
Lines: 33

In article <2389@rtech.rtech.com>, davek@rtech.rtech.com (Dave Kellogg) writes:
> 
> I'll refrain from trying to define a 4GL, but I'll say that SQL and 
> QUEL are Data Manipulation and Data Defintion languages, and not
> what I would consider fourth generation langauges.
> ...................................  I believe Chris Date (noted DBMS
> expert) uses the terms DDL and DML often in his writings as well.
> 
  I am pretty sure that the concepts of DDL and DML were first introduced
  in the original CODASYL (hierarchical/network) database definition.  Not
  to take anything away from Date, most certainly, by no means, etc...

> (No *definition* here, but I will list some properties)

  Here neither.  The primary property of interest to our shop is the tools
  to manipulate complex structures (such as forms, menus, graphs) as simple 
  objects.

  The following is NOT a complaint, simply an observation:  the problem at
  present is that many of the key characteristics of these structures are
  "wired" into the dbms code.  Which means that even minor deviations from
  the default concept of an object will often require tremendous increases
  in the amount of 4GL code one must write.   But even with this, the effort
  required to implement an application is very substantially reduced.
> 
> For example INGRES OSL is a superset of SQL.

  It's too bad (for us long-time Ingres users AND customers) that RTI is
  trying so hard to forget its QUEL heritage ........ :-)
> =================================================================
> David Kellogg
> Relational Technology (INGRES) New York City

  greg pavlov, fstrf, amherst, ny