Microsoft Research's C-Omega

Microsoft Research has produced a data-oriented programming language by merging C#, XPath and SQL. O'Reilly's XML.com website the inside scoop on the language in the article titled Introducing C-Omega written by Dare Obasanjo.

Comments

Re:Merging C# and SQL?

[hey!]

Not only is there nothing wrong with it, it's quite nice not having to generate lots of boilerplate code to fetch a value from the database. Combine this with iterators and collection objects, and it could be very nice.

Of course, the main issue becomes portability, but portability is not a top priority for everyone. In any case it is very possible to write non-portable code without embedded SQL and quite possible to write portable code with embedded SQL. For example you could embed your queries in interfaces specifying iterator methods, and have concrete classes for each database platform.

None of this stuff looks particularly radical. Which is a Good Thing (TM). That's what C# is -- nothing creative, just take the proven ideas from other platforms and don't try anything really new like Java did with checked exceptions. That's what Linux is, if you think about it.

Embedded SQL is not a radical new idea -- I remember it from special C preprocessors as far back as the early 80s. The XML features they have look to me like they've rediscovered S-expressions after 40 years, only with uglier (!) and less general syntax.

That said, the combination of XML as a transport/archival medium, object operations, and relational object serialization is very common. Therefore a scripting language which reduces the impedence mismatch between these is also a Good Thing (TM). You might think the XML-ification of everything in sight is the height of stupidity when in many situations superior technologies such as ASN.1 exist. I certainly do. But twenty five years in this business has taught me that what makes sense to you doesn't affect the choices you need to make as much what everybody else in the world thinks.