Re: PL/SQL -> Ada

["Marin D. Condic" <mcondic-nospam@quadruscorp.com>]

Bill Meahan wrote:
> 
> I think you miss my point: PL/SQL **is** Ada. Well, not really, but it
> _is _cobbled from Ada83 (they left a lot of the good stuff out). Hence
> an PL/SQL programmer _already_ knows a subset of Ada, probably without
> ever realizing it. Oracle seems to have gone to great lengths to not
> mention the derivation and only a handful of 3rd-party Oracle texts even
> make a passing reference to PL/SQL's origins let alone expound on them.
> 

There seems to be some general "embarassment" about mentioning that
someone or something has any connection to Ada. Its as if the Anti-Ada
bigots have enforced some kind of "Technical Correctness" on us all and
that to admit you use Ada or derived something from Ada is tantamount to
admitting that you eat babies for desert - or at least that you are a
moron. :-)

Maybe we need to start a Technical Rights movement - have a march on
Silicon Valley, boycot some buses, stuff like that. It could get some
media attention and swing some sympathy our way, eh? :-)

> At the risk of being repetitious: It's not that Ada interfaces well with
> SQL (in general), it's that thopusands of Oracle programmers are already
> using what amounts to (a piece of) Ada83. So why no effort to expand on
> that base?
> 

Well, my question would be: How do you reach them? And what would you
offer them with Ada? Could you find them on a newsgroup? If so, would
offering them a compiler alone be sufficient benefit to them? Or would
you have to offer them some bindings to something, development tools, or
what? Just because they are using an Ada-ish language to work with a
database does not necessarily imply that they have much use for a
general purpose language outside of the database realm unless there is
some utility or connection between the two. What might that be?

I'm all for promoting Ada wherever we can. It benefits us all to expand
the tent and bring in new users. The question of how to attract this
potential audience is one I don't have an answer for, but if you do, I'm
sure you'll be able to find some help here.

MDC
-- 
=============================================================
Marin David Condic   - Quadrus Corporation -   1.800.555.3393
1015-116 Atlantic Boulevard, Atlantic Beach, FL 32233
http://www.quadruscorp.com/
m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m

***PLEASE REMOVE THE "-NOSPAM" PART OF MY RETURN ADDRESS***

Visit my web site at:  http://www.mcondic.com/

"Because that's where they keep the money."
    --  Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed banks. 
=============================================================