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The irony here is that you mention SQL (the language of Relational Calculus) and in the same sentence claim that math is unnecessary.
by fbomb 13y ago
The irony here is that you mention SQL (the language of Relational Calculus) and in the same sentence claim that math is unnecessary.
- 10098 13y agobut you see, my point is that the actual hard problem of executing a SQL query has been solved by those who designed the DBMS. our task boils down to writing SQL, which is way easier than designing the machinery that implements relational algebra. EDIT: not to mention that you don't even have to understand relational algebra to write SQL. There are HORDES of programmers who don't know what it is yet they write SQL.
- fbomb 13y agoRelational Algebra is about executing the query. Relational Calculus is about formulating the query in the first place. Unless you copy-paste all your SQL code, you wind up using Relational Calculus. I would agree that most developers don't have a formal understanding of it (I sure don't) or even an awareness of it. They may not think of it as doing math. They may be thinking "how do I use a select with a join to get this particular set of data". But it's still math.
- mamcx 13y agoYeah, I know from where come the relational databases. Still, claim that using SQL is using math is like say using a car is using math. Like using python is using assembler.. and at the same time is not. This is kinda zend: If a developer don't think about math....