Product category:
Training Aids and eCommunication
News Release from: University of Derby | Subject: Tutorial D database
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 14 October 2004
Untouched formula could reshape database
landscape
A global breakthrough in the way databases are designed and developed is on the cards thanks to University of Derby lecturer Dave Voorhis.
A global breakthrough in the way databases are designed and developed is on the cards thanks to University of Derby lecturer Dave Voorhis He is developing a software program based on the database language 'Tutorial D', invented by international experts Hugh Darwen and Chris Date six years ago
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 27 Feb 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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Darwen and Date claim Tutorial D could be significantly more reliable and easier to use than the dominant computer database language SQL, which is used by most large global corporations to construct and use databases.
Mr Voorhis hopes to launch his software version of Tutorial D to universities for students to learn how to construct, design and use their own databases.
He said: "I was intrigued to find out that six years after Tutorial D was published no-one had tried to implement the language.
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"It was an appealing proposition to put the theory to the test and see if it does indeed have advantages over SQL." Mr Voorhis, an IT lecturer within the University's Derbyshire Business School, has been in contact with Hugh Darwen to discuss his research.
Mr Darwen, a retired database specialist with computer giant IBM, whom he represented for many years in the development of the international standard for SQL, has welcomed Mr Voorhis's research study.
He said: "I am delighted and greatly look forward to following further progress on this work.
"Dave Voorhis' implementation is already suitable for teaching purposes, and if university students can discover the benefits of a truly relational approach to databases, some might be motivated to bring these benefits to industry in their later years.
"Relational database theory is still a popular topic in computer science, and people who teach it suffer from having to use SQL.
"SQL is very badly constructed when set against all of the generally accepted criteria of good computer language design." In their original research paper The Third Manifesto, Darwen and Date defined a language based on the principles of good programming language design and on the well-known 'Relational Model of Data', published by EF Codd in 1970.
Date and Darwen claim Tutorial D would be significantly more reliable and easier to use than SQL.
Mr Darwen said: "The main drawbacks of SQL are ad hoc and badly conceived constructs that have no basis in the underlying theory and are difficult to learn and understand." Darwen, from Warwickshire, and California-based Date, published The Third Manifesto in 1995.
This was followed up in 1998 by a book entitled Foundation for Object-Relational Databases: The Third Manifesto.
A second edition appeared in 2001 with a changed title: Foundation for Future Database Systems: The Third Manifesto.
Now they are working on the third edition, to be published in 2005.
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