Re: Macros Make Me Mad

[Noel Welsh <address@hidden>]

--- "Michael Sperber [Mr.  Preprocessor]"
<sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
> A combinator language for SQL.  Francisco Solsona's
> SchemeQL goes in
> that direction, as probably do its Common Lisp
> counterparts.  Of
> course, these don't give you static syntax checking,
> but I'm pretty
> sure you'd be able to model this in some variant of
> Hindley/Milner.
> In fact, I'd be surprised if the ML/Haskell folks
> haven't come up with
> something in that direction; it's just something I
> haven't researched.

I think the long-term goal of SchemeQL is to get to
C.J. Date's Third Manifesto:

http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/darwen95third.html

It seems he wants an FP language with multipe
dispatch.   Anyone know a language like that? ;-)

There is a Haskell system that is similar to SchemeQL
but adds static typing:

Haskell/DB
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/leijen99domain.html

There are two things to note here:
- they use an extension to the Haskell type system
- synchronising the type definitions on the Haskell
side with those on the DB side must be very easy or it
will quickly slow down development.

A tighter intergration of the programming language
with the DB can lead to fun stuff:

http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/breazu-tannen91structural.html

I seem to be having this conversation in a number of
places:

http://lambda.weblogs.com/discuss/msgReader$4972?mode=topic&y=2002&m=11&d=17

HTH,
Noel

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