Re: [xml-dev] functional databases noodling ...

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

On 15/02/2012 18:07, daniela florescu wrote:
>> What Michael says.
> I don't think "what Michael says", Frank. But I don't think it matters either.
>
> Most ideas in CS can be be lineaged down in one way or the other in work that
> has been done in 50-60ties (those guys had all the good ideas..:-)
>
> However, the closest approximation, the and most correct and complete implementation of a
> running functional database was still O2: it was not Oracle, yet was not only a small prototype
> with a bunch of slides attached to it.
>
> I strongly advise people to look into query processing in the time of the O2. Lots of lessons to learn.
>
>
O2 was a great project and I agree that its query language is well worth 
studying. The project I worked on in the early 1990s, Fujitsu's ODB-II, 
owed a great deal to O2. IRIS didn't, it was in a quite different 
tradition and was earlier. One of the reasons O2 was a great project was 
that it took input from the functional database research rather than (as 
with other object databases) merely trying to be a persistent 
object-oriented programming language.

Michael Kay
Saxonica