Re: newbie queston: why would anyone use Oracle?

"William Robertson" <william.robertson_at_bigfoot.com> wrote in message news:1127500387.720471.142950_at_g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> The idea that PL/SQL is for "introducing loops and other procedural
> badness directly into my queries" or that it is "simple", or that you
> shouldn't use various arbitrary features on the grounds that "they are
> probably not simple deviations from the relational model" is absolutely
> ridiculous and an insult to full-time PL/SQL developers. That includes
> me by the way. It is as simple or otherwise as you choose to make it.
> PL/SQL has nothing whatever to do with introducing loops into queries.
> That is what XML is for. Jeez.

You shouldn't take it personally, I already admited that I know very little about what we're discussing. Certainly it was not my intention to insult anybody.

"PL/SQL has nothing whatever to do with introducing loops into queries."

Then why did someone call PL/SQL "procedural"? To me "procedural" means GL3. GL3 structures and concepts, when possible, need to be avoided in a set-based language. At least that's what I was taught when I learned theory. Maybe I just misinterpreted someone else's comment.

If not, I do acknowledge that there is still a need for GL3 features in relational languages. SQL Server 2005 (and probably Oracle already) finally provided a way of expressing recursive joins. But I hear the performance is poor, so in the land of MS, transitive closure will still require an IES.

Paul Received on Fri Sep 23 2005 - 15:40:57 CDT