[Info-ingres] What is like the Ingres that I remember?

[Roy Hann]

metalworker.mike at gmail.com wrote:

> Roy, thanks so much for the reply.  So Ingres is still the same?

No, Ingres has come a long way, but without losing backward compatibility
or dropping all the old tools. (vigraph is gone but that's about the only 
loss I can think of, and I don't think it was ever available in PC-Ingres.)

> As for the Quel vs. SQL thing, I originally chose Quel because, as I dimly
> recall, SQL at the time didn't deal well with relational retrievals.
> You couldn't retrieve a record from one table based on information in
> another, matched up by the TID, or whatever.  

I'm among the first to call SQL every kind of disappointing crap, but
there aren't many situations where (explicitly) joining on the TID
is desirable. Whatever SQL's flaws, that ain't one of them. 

> I'm sure it can do it
> now, but my recollection is that at the time you had to build a view
> to make the two (three, whatever) tables look like one table, so that
> SQL could deal with it.  Quel dealt with it easily.  

You may be thinking of computing aggregates. Until relatively recently SQL
forced you into using views where QUEL didn't. SQL now supports common 
table expressions (CTEs) and subqueries in the FROM clause. Inelegant and 
verbose, but at least you don't need a litter of special purpose views 
quite the way you used to.

Roy