One of the things that I love about Perl is that the value of a scalar can be an integer, a float, a 20 character string or a 2MB string - and as its value changes between these, the conversions are done automatically and transparently. It's "typeless".

Sure, its not as efficient as if the compiler had hints about what to expect - but for many applications its fine, and the extra few milliseconds the interpreter wastes is made up for by the programmer not having to think about type conversions, checking and compatibility.

So why can't I have the same thing from my database? Every database I've seen has been an SQL relational database. You have to take a long time specifying column types and what not. Why can't we have a typeless relational database which stores the columns in the same way as perl scalars?

Or is there already one? Or am I missing something?

Come to think of it. What mature CPAN modules are there that implement a non-SQL database of any kind, relational or not?

-Andrew.

Andrew Tomazos  |  andrew@tomazos.com  |  www.tomazos.com

In reply to Typeless Relational Database by tomazos

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