>> You mean like the way SQL is more scalable *because* you can't process 
>> the next row depending on what the previous one was?
> 
> Basically, yes.

Mmm, OK.

> In order for SQL to maintain the consistency guarantees, 
> it has to have access to all the data. If you don't want duplicate 
> primary keys, at some point, your primary keys have to all be on the 
> same computer.

Not necessarily. If you partition all the PKs into buckets and each 
bucket resides in a single place, you can still check for duplicates.

> If you have 5 TB of primary key information in one table, 
> you have trouble.

Yes. For a start, where do you find enough physical space to put that 
many HDs to store it all?

> You already use an OODB every day. It's called a file system.
> You can't do complex searches.

That's why people use database engines when they want stuff to be 
searchable. ;-)

Still, I guess even an OODB can be indexed... Google somehow manages to 
find all the webpages in the world that contain the word "banana" in 
less than 1000 ms, even though this is obviously impossible.

>> Of course, trouble is, almost all Haskell libraries that involve C 
>> fail to compile on Windoze. (I'm told it's because Windows lacks a 
>> "standard" place to put header files, etc.)
> 
> Uh, well, it means there might be more than one compiler. :-) I thought 
> the idea was to use compiler switches for that. :-)

It seems that on Linux, Haskell's package manager somehow automatically 
detects if the C library is installed, and if so, where it can be found. 
On Windoze, however, it tends to just spaz out.

OTOH, it's not unheard of for Haskell packages to use bash scripts as 
part of their build process, so...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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