--CELKO-- schrieb:
>>>For what is PL/SQL (Oracle) and Transact SQL in Sybase? Because procedural code is not necessary? <<
>
>
> Those are all proprietary tools from early days of SQL, when systems
> were built on top of existing file systems. And the Standard SQL/PSM
> also exists. You use them for kludges when you do not know how to
> write SQL or have to write code that gets to the engine internals.

>>>Sorry, nonsense. <<
>
> No, I based that estimate on 20 years experience teaching SQL to
> procedural programmers in college and industry. Oh, I also have written
> a few books on the language Will you tell me why you think that
> estimate is wrong?

We are often given internal training to staff or at the client site on
our database model which is from the financial sector and the database
has more than 1000 tables. If we would teach it from the ivory tower
point of view in a academic way, it would take us 1 year to teach
design of some pure SQL procedures that allow us to calculate some Loans
including linear interpolation in a yield curve or applying some more
complex math calc (including built-in functions like exp() and so on.
Not to use some cursors or while statements simply would make the code
too complex or we would need java, C, C++ or VBA which would make it
again more complex. I think mixing procedural code (avoiding it where
possible) with good SQL data retrieval statements is the best approach
to get good productivity and performance.

Dietmar