Technical Perspective: Reflections on Extending SQL using Constraints

Abstract

(a) Application developers needed a programmatic way to invoke relational query functionality from within their applications. The most primitive and most prevalent form of such integration uses ODBC or JDBC APIs. While they provide connectivity to database objects, the application programmer still must manage two separate type systems and programming models. LINQ (Language Integrated Query) is an elegant example of integration where query expressions are introduced as first class citizen in the programming languages. Object-relational mapping tools allow the application programmer to continue working in their object-oriented programming paradigm even though they may be storing and retrieving relational database objects.