You are right that inheritance can be simulated by additional tables and
views, but there is other overhead to make the views updateable and so on.
There are several object oriented database systems which save developer a
lot of time by means of inheritance of tables. This idea is not as mad as
one can say. I am sure this is the future of database programming.
Ales

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adrian Roman [mailto:aroman@...]
> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 6:58 PM
> To: ib-support@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [ib-support] Firebird mention
>
>
> Hi,
>
> Yes, it's about tables... My mistake.
> I never worked with Postgres. I looked over it a while ago,
> and that's it.
> I made a confusion with Oracle. There is there a thing named "Data
> Cartridge" which allows defining structures (objects) and
> even methods for
> them, and also allows inheritance.
>
> Nevertheless, I think this is useless from relational point
> of view. A field
> should contain an atomic piece of information.
>
> The same goes for deriving tables. Why you should derive a table?
> You can use a table for extension and a view for the derived
> table that
> joins the table from which you want to derive and the
> extension to obtain
> the inherited table, but I don't see why one would want to use object
> oriented programming in databases.
> OO programming and relational databases are not comparable.