Michael Kay writes:

> I would resist this kind of thinking. SQL was successful because it 
> put functionality first, and left implementors to devise 
> optimisation strategies.

I am sympathetic to this as one side of the tradeoff, but I don't think it 
entirely settles the question.  The Principle of Least Power [1] suggests 
that we don't want to use a bulldozer when a simple hammer will do.  Even 
SQL succeeds in part because it is declarative and ammenable to 
optimization in ways that a more general or more imperative language might 
not be.  I agree that we should not necessarily design the language around 
particular optimizations, but I do believe it's important to convince 
ourselves that it is likely to be optimizable.

Noah

[1] http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html#PLP

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
--------------------------------------





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