A blog to lift the fog on Dataphor

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  • steve

    #1

    A blog to lift the fog on Dataphor

    Since people are introducing their blog to this IBM audience, allow
    me:)


    My protagonist is Dataphor. It's an open source RAD tool that's built
    around a rdbs. But this isn't Serge's sql (I say that respectfully and
    with admiration:) Dataphors relational language, called D4, is based
    on the D language outlined by C. J. Date and Hugh Darwen in their work
    on a future db system:
    "Databases, Types and the Relational Model The Third Manifesto", 2007

    D4 is a relational algebra not a calculus.

    Is sql my antagonist? Well..it depends on your own subjective
    judgement:) I do my share of comparing and contrasting. Am I too harsh
    at times? I'm sure. But I'm also gentle at times:) This isn't search
    and destroy, but rather to spark interest.

    Dataphor is written in C#. Those that are familiar with MS Linq/Entity
    Framework in the sense that the compiler derives an anonymous type
    from an expression are a little further along in understanding the
    computer science of the relational model. If MS had anyone that
    understood the difference between an anonymous type and a table (or
    list) type in the relational sense, perhaps they wouldn't be
    emphasizing Peter Chens model for AD:)

    What does all this have to do with DB2? Dataphor will use DB2 as a
    'device' for storing all data and access to it. If you understand
    query chunking you understand the relationship between the two.
    Dataphor will attempt to hand off any relational expression it can to
    DB2. This is the same as ORM. But if it can't translate an expression
    to DB2 sql it will take over the processing itself. And you're never
    that far from DB2 as you can pass a DB2 query from Dataphor directly
    via a pass-thru query (and treat the result as a strongly typed D4
    'variable').

    I have successfully supplanted the entire DDL of MS Sql Server with
    Dataphor for applications. Dataphor offers superior treatment of keys,
    constraints, triggers (events), procedures/functions and proposables.
    It offers the ability to use logical hints in place of physical ones.
    And, of course, it offers a strongly 'TYPED' language with 'relational
    assignment' and all that that entails.

    I hope you'll check out Dataphor and find my blog helpful along the
    way. Dataphor could always use a few more good men:)

    best,
    steve dassin

    visit dataphor at:

    and:

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