Re:The database I wish I had
by Joker_vD on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @08:24AM
(#24352527)
They were in SQL:92, but IIRC adoption was somewhat slow and patchy, and has generally finished somewhen in the early 2000s.
My point is, the parent's claim that SQL "operate[s] on sets of data (aka tables) using set theory", and does it "really well" but when you actually look at SQL, you realise that sets/tables aren't really first-class ― derived tables were added in later versions of SQL, and literal tables still don't exist, but those are things you expect a language focused on table manipulations to have. Nope, it's a language for building very specific kinds of queries which was then patched and extended into something more general.
My point is, the parent's claim that SQL "operate[s] on sets of data (aka tables) using set theory", and does it "really well" but when you actually look at SQL, you realise that sets/tables aren't really first-class ― derived tables were added in later versions of SQL, and literal tables still don't exist, but those are things you expect a language focused on table manipulations to have. Nope, it's a language for building very specific kinds of queries which was then patched and extended into something more general.