[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
> At 12:07 PM 5/5/2002 -0600, Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> >Anyway, back to the main point. I agree with your broader definition of
> >types as being defined by constraints, and this is *precisely* why I am
> >always ridiculing the W3C efforts which put so much effort into static
> >typing at the behest of their SQL and procedural programming backgrounds
> >(I guess). Programmers don't need to become pure mathematicians to
> >appreciate this: Bertrand Meyer provides much of the essence in his own
> >writing about object-oriented development.
>
> I don't really understand you here, Uche.
Of course you don't. Because I assumed we were talking about utility for XML, not general purpose programming, I ommitted the 25 pages it requires to discuss the philosophy behind first-class dynamic typing without ambiguity.
*sigh*
> Bertrand Meyer certainly felt that static typing was a central feature of
> Eiffel, the language he designed.
Static typing was there, for the same reason that static typing emerged in compilers in the first place: to take advantage of physical layer facilities provided by the hardware. I am not arguing this reality, and never have. My problem with static typing starts when it becomes the basis of user data typing in languages. For instance, the C++ and Java wedding of static types to classes, causing painful distortion to both.
When it comes to user modularization, Meyer favors general-purpose constraints, which is why he built *these* into Eiffel.
Static typing is a necessary evil for systems at that lower level: for performance reasons. Being that XML is at a higher level of processing, it should not have to be bound to this evil. At least not explicitly.
> If you think Bertrand Meyer is on the right track, saying that both dynamic
> typing and static typing are important, then why do you think that this
> does not apply to XQuery?
Because Meyer was constructing a compiler: he had to deal directly with the physical layer. I think one of the strengths of XML is that technologies at the XML layer should not have to. This was also one of the promises of relational DBMS, which I think got besmirched in the ascendancy of SQL.
--
Uche Ogbuji Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net http://4Suite.org http://fourthought.com
Track chair, XML/Web Services One (San Jose, Boston): http://www.xmlconference.com/
DAML Reference - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/05/01/damlref.html
RDF Query using Versa - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think10/index.html
XML, The Model Driven Architecture, and RDF @ XML Europe - http://www.xmleurope.com/2002/kttrack.asp#themodel
|
