Tom,

> We have a number of issues revolving around the fact that composite types
> (row types) aren't first-class objects.  I think it's past time to fix
> that.  Here are some notes about doing it.  I am not sure all these ideas
> are fully-baked ... comments appreciated.

I'll want to add to the documentation on composite types, then.   We'll need a 
stern warning to users not to abuse them.  Easily done, I think.

Composite types are frequently abused by OO and Windows programmers to break 
the relational model.    I used to be an MSDN member (thank you, I've 
recovered) and frequently ran into, on the mailing list, users getting 
themselves into some unresolvable mess becuase they'd used composite types in 
SQL server to combine several rows ... or even effectively an entire child 
table ... into one field.

Othewise, looks good to me.   I don't think I'm qualified to second-guess you 
on the implementation.

-- 
-Josh Berkus
 Aglio Database Solutions
 San Francisco


Tue, 30 Mar 2004 10:00:50 -0800
Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Re: Better support for whole-row operations and composite types