dmbaker (2/18/2008)
Eric Wilson (2/18/2008)
With due respect, I'm afraid you missed my point. One (major) goal of the Relational Model was to be as uncluttered as possible. To that end, relations (a.k.a. tables) provide all the necessary complexity we need. Arrays, or any other data structure, only add complexity without adding additional power! This leads to arbitrariness of solutions and additional confusion between the logical and physical layers. No good can come of it.{ snip }
Anyway, I really don't disagree with you. I think you nailed it when you said tables "...are more powerful (if fully implemented...)". If we were able to toss tables around in TSQL just like any other datatype, that would certainly go a long way.
Yes, seems we agree after all. My point was, as long as we (the DB developer community) are asking vendors for features, let's all please ask for more fully implemented table support that is rich and robust! That would give us far more power than Arrays and has the additional bonus of being completely consistent with the existing model of what a relational DB is to be.