ON DECLARATIVE INTEGRITY SUPPORT AND DATAPHOR

From: DH

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TO: Editor

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I've been teaching myself Dataphor, a product that I learned about through your Web site! As a practice project, I've been rewriting a portion of a large Smalltalk application to use Dataphor, and I've been stunned to see just how much application code disappears when you have a DBMS that supports declarative integrity constraints. In some classes, over 90% of the methods became unnecessary.

I know that you don't want to associate yourself with any commercial product, but I wish Dataphor could get mentioned more frequently on www.dbdebunk.com. This is a product that deserves to be better known. I am trying to bring Dataphor to the attention of more people within my company, so an opportunity to have someone like yourself speak on relational database theory may present itself. As you can imagine, many of our associates have product-specific knowledge, so we have plenty of people who need enlightenment.

From: Fabian Pascal

To: DH

I don’t know why you are stunned. Anybody who knows and understands data fundamentals should expect this. Database definition/schema is nothing but integrity constraints and the sum total of integrity constraints is the best approximation to what the database means to the DBMS. Declare those and applications will only need to deal with communication with, and presentation of results to the user.

Because of the nature of IT industry there are tons of people who know products, but there aren't many who know and do what I do, so I stick to fundamentals. Even if they use Dataphor they will also need to know fundamentals and there are not many who can educate on that. [Ed. Note: It is rather disappointing, though, that even those rare companies whose products concretize relational principles don’t seem interested in utilizing relational proponents as a resource to educate current and/or potential customers on the advantages of the technology, particularly since a vast majority of practitioners need enlightment, but are not aware of it.]

Note, however, that declarative integrity is not the only aspect that confers relational benefits on users. [Ed. Note: Several recent exchanges I posted here reveal that referential integrity is the only kind of integrity practitioners know of.] One also must have an otherwise truly relational DBMS (TRDBMS) and I have already alluded to a technology that allows that, but unfortunately I cannot say more for legal reasons. The implementation of a TRDBMS that also fully supports declarative integrity is the full solution and I am not sure Dataphor is that, although I am not sufficiently familiar with it to express an opinion.

It is important to keep the site above products and focused on fundamentals and away from any commercial considerations. But good products are mentioned on the site, and in fact, I will want to post this exchange, for that reason.

Posted 11/01/02

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