Re: Entry Points to the Data

"Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message news:c9spfk$lu1$1_at_news.netins.net...
> "Alan" <not.me_at_uhuh.rcn.com> wrote in message
> news:uulwc.5843$QT3.624_at_nwrdny01.gnilink.net...
> > "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message
> > news:c9smih$j0p$1_at_news.netins.net...
>
> > This notion was implemented years ago in many reporting tools. For
> example,
> > Cognos Impromptu has something called a "catalog". The catalog contains
> all
> > of the joins necessary to connect all of the tables in the database that
> > make sense to be joined and have a means of joining together. In other
> > words, a superset of all possible views.
>
> Yes, good point -- maybe I'm asking why the logical perspective on the
> database (which is what the relational model is said to provide) isn't
more
> intuitive for a user wanting to shop for their data so that third-parties
> have to provide the logical view that the user wants. If the relational
> model is the logical view of the database, then why doesn't it do the job
of
> providing the logical view of the data that people need (including what is
> required to apply the logic of a query)?
>
> --dawn
>

It's the vendors, not the realtional model. The vendors choose to concentrate on the back-end, and give lip service to the front-end. The Oracle reporting tools are clunky, for example. Anyway, remember that SQL was _supposed_ to be an end-user language. LOL. The Cognos Impromptu example is a relational model implementation. Received on Sat Jun 05 2004 - 18:24:33 CEST