> In theory, there is no domain (or finite set of domains) that cannot be accurately modeled using tuples of things and their relations.
That seems right to me, but is it really provably true?
That seems right to me, but is it really provably true?
Practically? I've never had someone throw a problem at me I couldn't model in SQL. Not saying I can guarantee performance, but in terms of abstract modeling I've never encountered something that can't be done "clean".
I'd like to use the analogy of painting. What can't you paint on that canvas that isn't trivially-hindered by the available media? Can you actually describe that space of things?
In my estimation, premature optimization is why most people can't work in these terms. You wind up with a tuple like WorldObjects and immediately go off the deep end about a billion row scale before you are done naming things.
Now you just need one tuple ("our_system", "the_db", the_binary_blob)
QED :)
To be truly universal, your model needs to be computationally stronger - it needs to be turing complete. For example fractals could never be modeled by any number of tuples, but can be perfectly represented by very short computer programs.
One hacky equivalence I can come up with is that you have a tuple with a single string value, and encode something in that string.