Re: Fabian Pascal and RDBMS deficiencies in fully implementing

Aaron Bingham wrote:

> David Fetter wrote:
>
>> In SQL, you can do this (this example condensed from Libkin's
>> "Expressive Power of SQL" on the page above):
>>
>> SELECT
>> (SELECT count(*) FROM table_1) <
>> (SELECT count(*) FROM table_2)
>> AS "Can't compare cardinalities in first order logic";
>>
>> Note the name of the output column. It's important and true, as you
>> can verify if you care to do your homework on foundations of
>> mathematics. Relational algebra is a subset of first-order logic
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra>, and as a direct
>> consequence, you can't do this simple but interesting thing with it.
>>
>>
> I must be missing something important. What aspect of the above query
> is supposedly impossible in relational algebra and/or relational
> calculus?

Having looked at this again, I now see that your statement above is
strictly correct, but misleading. Relational algebra consists of a
limited number of operators on relations. As such, relational algebra
says nothing about aggregate functions such as COUNT, or how to build a
relation from scaler values. Relational algebra is, however, only part
of the relational model as defined by Date, and Tutorial D includes all
the previsions we need to re-write the above query. The above query
could be expressed in Tutorial D more-or-less as follows (I'm not sure
if arbitrary strings are allowed as column names in Tutorial D, but
that's beside the point):

RELATION { TUPLE { "Can't compare cardinalities in first order logic"
(COUNT(table_1) < COUNT(table_2)) } }

Placing the result of the comparison in a relation seems unnecessary,
but I have done so for equivalence to your example. Or did I miss the
point?

Regards,

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Aaron Bingham
Senior Software Engineer
Cenix BioScience GmbH
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