On 13/12/10 01:38, Darren Duncan wrote: > Darren Duncan wrote: >> Wols Lists wrote: >>> Dunno how well that approach translates into a relational engine, >>> because Pick has several very non-relational quirks (every "row" MUST >>> have a primary key, the dictionary DEscribes, not PREscribes the FILE, >>> etc etc). >> Can you say more about this last paragraph. These last couple items don't >> necessarily mean that Pick is non-relational given how they can be >> interpreted. >> (I don't know anything about Pick.) > Actually, nevermind. Google is your friend. -- Darren Duncan
Pick is a jack-of-all-trades database - I describe it as being a bit like C - it gives you all the rope you need to shoot yourself in the foot :-) But it's best if used as an object-relational database. Pick has FILEs and RECORDs instead of TABLEs and ROWs, and you can store lists in a cell :-) Personally, I believe relational *technology* is fatally flawed by design - there's nothing wrong with the maths, but you can't do astronomy with classical physics and you can't do large information stores with set theory :-) I know that's flame-bait, but let's quickly explain ... I would say that a well designed Pick database uses the object-relational paradigm. Each file is a class, each record is an instance, and each record is a FULLY NORMALISED N-DIMENSIONAL ARRAY. (Just not first normal form.) So my datastore is heavily influenced by the real world. And I can reason about real world performance. All stuff that's forbidden in a "real" relational database. And actually, I can prove that my default performance is pretty close to a real relational database's theoretical best. But all of that depends on a close tying between the logical structure, the physical structure, and the real world. And all of that is totally antithetical to the basis behind relational database theory. And building on that, I would actually conclude that, just as in the real world parallel lines DO meet (Euclid's statement to the contrary notwithstanding), I would also conclude that in the real world data does NOT come just as rows and columns in sets (C&D's statement to the contrary notwithstanding), but it also comes in lists, bags, and jumbles. I'm quite happy to carry on discussing this, either privately or on the list, but there's a very good chance the list wouldn't welcome it ... Cheers, Wol _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@sqlite.org http://sqlite.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
