On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

> Avi wrote:
> 	Come on, I'm not "bemoaning" anything, nor do I think the "only" is
> 	necessary.  As I said, an algebra of binary relations is a natural
> 	approach for what you're doing, but it's rather awkward to model a set of
> 	Oracle tables that way (or at least, it seems so in my ignorance - feel
> 	free to enlighten me).
>
> I want to point out that the purpose of my BinaryRelation class is
> *NOT* to model a set of Oracle tables but simply to plug a gap in
> the data structures available to *programmers* for in-memory programming.

Completely understood.  That was in fact precisely the point of what I was
saying - that the relational algebra work I was doing *was* trying to
conform to Codd's definitions, whereas the work you are doing (and to some
extent the work Brian is doing) has different goals, and hence a very
different design.  This is as it should be.

Avi