Chapter 1. SQL Is Declarative, Not Procedural
IN THE PREFACE I told a short story about FORTRAN programmers who could only solve problems using loops and a LISP programmer who could only solve problems recursively. This is not uncommon because we love the tools we know. Let me tell a joke instead of a story: A mathematician, a physicist, and a database programmer were all given a rubber ball and told to find the volume.
The mathematician carefully measured the diameter and either evaluated the volume of sphere formula or used a triple integral if the ball was not perfectly round.
The physicist filled a beaker with water, put the ball in the water, and measured the total displacement. He does not care about the details of the shape of the ball. ...
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