NAME
Muldis::D - Formal spec of Muldis D relational DBMS lang
VERSION
This document is Muldis::D version 0.135.0.
PREFACE
This is the root document of the Muldis D language specification; the documents that comprise the remaining parts of the specification, in their suggested reading order (but that all follow the root), are: Muldis::D::Basics, Muldis::D::Core (which has its own tree of parts to follow), Muldis::D::Dialect::PTMD_STD, Muldis::D::Dialect::HDMD_Perl6_STD, Muldis::D::Dialect::HDMD_Perl5_STD, Muldis::D::Conventions, Muldis::D::Ext::Counted, Muldis::D::Ext::Temporal, Muldis::D::Ext::Spatial.
DESCRIPTION
This distribution / multi-part document is the human readable authoritative formal specification of the Muldis D language, and of the virtual environment in which it executes. If there's a conflict between any other document and this one, then either the other document is in error, or the developers were negligent in updating it before this one, so you can yell at them.
The fully-qualified name of this multi-part document and the language specification it contains (as a single composition) is Muldis_D:"http://muldis.com":0.135.0. It is the official/original (not embraced and extended) Muldis D language specification by the authority Darren Duncan (http://muldis.com), version 0.135.0 (this number matches the VERSION pod in this file). This multi-part document is named and organized with the expectation that many dialects, extensions, and core versions of it will exist over time, some of those under the original author's control, and some under the control of other parties. The "VERSIONING" pod section in this file presents a formal method for specifying the fully-qualified name of a complete language derived from Muldis D, including any common base plus any dialects and extensions. All code written in any dialect or derivation of Muldis D should begin by specifying the fully-qualified name of the language that it is written in, the format of the name as defined by said method, to make the code unambiguous to both human and machine (eg, implementing) readers of the code. The method should be very future-proof.
Muldis D is a computationally / Turing complete (and industrial strength) high-level programming language with fully integrated database functionality; you can use it to define, query, and update relational databases. The language's paradigm is a mixture of declarative, homoiconic, functional, imperative, and object-oriented. It is primarily focused on providing reliability, consistency, portability, and ease of use and extension. (Logically, speed of execution can not be declared as a Muldis D quality because such a quality belongs to an implementation alone; however, the language should lend itself to making fast implementations.)
Muldis D is intended to qualify as a "D" language as defined by "Databases, Types, and The Relational Model: The Third Manifesto" (TTM), a formal proposal for a solid foundation for data and database management systems, written by Christopher J. Date and Hugh Darwen; see http://www.aw-bc.com/catalog/academic/product/0,1144,0321399420,00.html for a publishers link to the book that formally publishes TTM. See http://www.thethirdmanifesto.com/ for some references to what TTM is, and also copies of some documents that were used in writing Muldis D.
It should be noted that Muldis D, being quite new, may omit some features that are mandatory for a "D" language initially, to speed the way to a useable partial solution, but any omissions will be corrected later. Also, it contains some features that go beyond the scope of a "D" language, so Muldis D is technically a "D plus extra"; examples of this are constructs for creating the databases themselves and managing connections to them.
Muldis D also incorporates design aspects and constructs that are taken from or influenced by Perl 6, other general-purpose languages (particularly functional ones like Haskell), Tutorial D, various D implementations, and various SQL implementations (see the Muldis::D::SeeAlso file). It also appears in retrospect that Muldis D has some designs in common with FoxPro or xBase, and with the Ada and Lua languages.
In any event, the Muldis D documentation will be focusing mainly on how Muldis D itself works, and will spend little time in providing rationale; you can read the aforementioned external documentation for much of that.
Continue reading the language spec in Muldis::D::Basics.
Also look at the separately distributed Muldis::Rosetta, which is the first main implementation of Muldis D.
VERSIONING
All code written in any variant of Muldis D should begin with metadata that explicitly states that it is written in Muldis D, and that fully identifies what variant of Muldis D it is, so that the code is completely unambiguous to both human and machine (eg, implementing) readers of the code. This pod section explains how this metadata should be formatted, and it is intended to be as future-proofed as possible in the face of a wide variety of both anticipated and unforeseen language variants, both by the original author and by other parties.
At the highest level, a fully-qualified Muldis D language name is a (ordered) sequence of values having a minimum of 2 elements, and typically about 4-6 elements. The elements are read one at a time, starting with the first; the value of each element, combined with those before it, determine what number and kind of elements are valid to follow it in the sequence. So all Muldis D variants are organized into a single hierarchy where each child node represents a language derived from or extending the language represented by its parent node.
In documentation, it is typical to use a Muldis D language name involving just a sub-sequence of the allowed elements that is missing child-most allowed elements; in that case, this language name implicitly refers to the entire language sub-tree having the specified elements in common; an example of this is the 3-element name mentioned in this file's DESCRIPTION section. Even in code, sometimes certain child-most elements are optional.
While not mandatory for Muldis D variants in general, it is strongly recommended that all elements of a Muldis D language name would, when expressed in terms of character strings, be expressly limited to comprising just non-control characters in the ASCII repertoire, and not include any other characters such as Unicode has. The primary reason for this is to make it as simple as possible to interpret a language name on all architectures, especially so that any explicit hints in the name on how to interpret the rest of the Muldis D code, including hints as to what character repertoire it is written in, can be understood without ambiguity. For all official Muldis D variants, ASCII-only names is actually mandatory.
Foundation
The actual formatting of a "sequence" used as this language name is dependent on the language variant itself, but it should be kept as simple to write and use as is possible for the medium of that variant.
Generally speaking, every Muldis D variant belongs to one of just 2 groups, which are non-hosted plain-text and hosted data.
With all non-hosted plain-text variants, the Muldis D code is represented by an (ordered) string/sequence of characters like with most normal programming languages, and so the actual format (of the language name defining sequence and its elements) is defined in terms of an ordered series of character sub-strings, each sub-string being a name sequence element; the sub-strings are often bounded by delimiting characters, and separated by separating characters. The string of characters comprising this name string would be the first characters in the file, and only following them would be the characters for the actual Muldis D code that the name is metadata for.
With all hosted data variants, the Muldis D code is represented by collection-typed values that are of some native type of some other programming language (eg, Perl) which is the host of Muldis D, so the actual format (of the language name defining sequence and its elements) is simply a sequence-typed value of the host programming language. The Muldis D code is written here by way of writing code in the host language.
Base Name
The first element of the Muldis D language name is simply the character string Muldis_D. Any language which wants to claim to be a variant of Muldis D should have this exact first element; only have some other value if you don't want to claim a connection to Muldis D at all, and in that case feel free to just ignore everything else in this multi-document.
Base Authority
The second element of the Muldis D language name is some character string whose value uniquely identifies the authority or author of the variant's base language specification. Generally speaking, the community at large should self-regulate authority identifier strings so they are reasonable formats and so each prospective authority/author has one of their own that everyone recognizes as theirs. Note that an authority/author doesn't have to be an individual person; it could be some corporate entity instead.
While technically this string could be any distinct value at all, it is strongly recommended for Muldis D variant names that authority strings follow the formats that are valid as authority strings for the long names of Perl 6 packages, such as a CPAN identifier or an http url.
For the official/original Muldis D language spec by Muldis Data Systems, Inc., that string is always http://muldis.com during the foreseeable future.
If someone else wants to embrace and extend Muldis D, then they must use their own (not http://muldis.com) base authority identifier, to prevent ambiguity, assist quality control, and give due credit.
In this context, embrace and extend means for someone to do any of the following:
Releasing a modified version of this current multi-document where the original of the modified version was released by someone else (the original typically being the official release), as opposed to just releasing a delta document that references the current multi-document as a foundation. This applies both for unofficial modifications and for official modifications following a change of who is the official maintainer.
Releasing a delta document for a version of this current multi-document where the referenced original is released by someone else, and where the delta either makes incompatible changes or adds DBMS entities in the
sys.stdtop-level namespace (as opposed to insys.imp).
Base Version Number
The third element of the Muldis D language name, at the very least when the base authority is http://muldis.com, is a multi-part base version number, which identifies the base language spec version between all those by the same authority, typically indicating the relative ages of the versions, the relative sizes of their deltas, and perhaps which development branches the versions are on. The base version number is a sequence of non-negative integers that consists of at least 1 element, and either 3 or 4 elements is recommended (the official base version number has 3 elements); elements are ordered from most significant to least (eg, [major, minor, bug-fix]). At the present time, the official spec version number to use is shown in the VERSION and DESCRIPTION pod of the current file, when corresponding to the spec containing that file.
Dialect
The fourth element of the Muldis D language name, at the very least when the base authority is http://muldis.com, uniquely identifies which Muldis D language primary dialect the Muldis D code (that this fully-qualified language name is metadata for) is formatted in; for example this may be one of several non-hosted plain-text variants, or one of several hosted data variants (each host language has its own ones). This fourth element can either be some character string or be a sequence of 3+ elements. In the first case, the character string is interpreted as the name of one of the several dialects included in the current multi-document, and the specific variant of said dialect is assumed to be whichever one is bundled with the already named base language authority+version. In the second case, the sequence of elements is a dialect name plus authority plus version plus whatever, for some spec definition not bundled with the current multi-document. Note that a dialect specification can appear to provide features not in the underlying main spec, but code written in any dialect needs to be translatable to a standard dialect without changing the code's behavior.
See the following parts of the current multi-document for descriptions of bundled dialects (names subject to change): Muldis::D::Dialect::PTMD_STD, Muldis::D::Dialect::HDMD_Perl6_STD, Muldis::D::Dialect::HDMD_Perl5_STD.
Extensions
Whether or not the Muldis D language name has a fifth or further elements depends on the dialect. See the documentation for each individual dialect to see what it supports or requires.
SEE ALSO
Go to the Muldis::D::SeeAlso file for the majority of external references.
AUTHOR
Darren Duncan (darren@DarrenDuncan.net)
LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT
This file is part of the formal specification of the Muldis D language.
Muldis D is Copyright © 2002-2010, Muldis Data Systems, Inc.
Muldis D is free documentation for software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) as published by the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/); either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. You should have received copies of the GPL as part of the Muldis::D distribution, in the file named "LICENSE/GPL"; if not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
Any versions of Muldis D that you modify and distribute must carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any changes, in addition to preserving this original copyright notice and other credits.
While it is by no means required, the copyright holder of Muldis D would appreciate being informed any time you create a modified version of Muldis D that you are willing to distribute, because that is a practical way of suggesting improvements to the standard version.
TRADEMARK POLICY
MULDIS and MULDIS MULTIVERSE OF DISCOURSE are trademarks of Muldis Data Systems, Inc. (http://www.muldis.com/). The trademarks apply to computer database software and related services. See http://www.muldis.com/trademark_policy.html for the full written details of Muldis Data Systems' trademark policy.
The word MULDIS is intended to be used as the distinguishing brand name for all the products and services of Muldis Data Systems. So we would greatly appreciate it if in general you do not incorporate the word MULDIS into the name or logo of your website, business, product or service, but rather use your own distinct name (exceptions appear below). It is, however, always okay to use the word MULDIS only in descriptions of your website, business, product or service to provide accurate information to the public about yourself.
If you do incorporate the word MULDIS into your names anyway, either because you have permission from us or you have some other good reason, then: You must make clear that you are not Muldis Data Systems and that you do not represent Muldis Data Systems. A simple or conspicuous disclaimer on your home page and product or service documentation is an excellent way of doing that.
Please respect the conventions of the Perl community by not using the namespace Muldis:: at all for your own works, unless you have explicit permission to do so from Muldis Data Systems; that namespace is mainly just for our official works. You can always use either the MuldisX:: namespace for related unofficial works, or some other namespace that is completely different. Also as per conventions, its fine to use Muldis within a Perl package name where that word is nested under some other project-specific namespace (for example, Foo::Storage::Muldis_Rosetta or Bar::Interface::Muldis_Rosetta), and the package serves to interact with a Muldis Data Systems work or service.
If you have made a language variant or extension based on the Muldis D language, then please follow the naming conventions described in the VERSIONING ("VERSIONING" in Muldis::D) documentation of the official Muldis D language spec.
If you would like to use (or have already used) the word MULDIS for any use that ought to require permission, please contact Muldis Data Systems and we'll discuss a way to make that happen.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
None yet.
FORUMS
Several public email-based forums exist whose main topic is the Muldis D language and its implementations, especially the Muldis Rosetta reference implementation, but also the Set::Relation module. They exist so that users of Muldis D or Muldis Rosetta can help each other, or so that help coming from the projects' developers can be said once to many people, rather than necessarily to each individually. All of these you can reach via http://mm.darrenduncan.net/mailman/listinfo; go there to manage your subscriptions to, or view the archives of, the following:
muldis-db-announce@mm.darrenduncan.net-
This low-volume list is mainly for official announcements from Muldis D or Muldis Rosetta developers, though developers of related projects can also post their announcements here. This is not a discussion list.
muldis-db-users@mm.darrenduncan.net-
This list is for general discussion among people who are using Muldis D or any of its implementations, especially the Muldis Rosetta reference implementation. This is the best place to ask for basic help in getting Muldis Rosetta installed on your machine or to make it do what you want. If you are in doubt on which list to use, then use this one by default. You could also submit feature requests for Muldis Rosetta or report perceived bugs here, if you don't want to use CPAN's RT system.
muldis-d-language@mm.darrenduncan.net-
This list is mainly for discussion among people who are designing the Muldis D language specification, or who are implementing or adapting Muldis D in some form, or who are writing Muldis D documentation, tests, or examples. It is not the main forum for any Muldis D implementations, nor is it the place for non-implementers to get help in using said.
muldis-db-devel@mm.darrenduncan.net-
This list is for discussion among people who are designing or implementing the Muldis Rosetta DBMS framework core, or who are implementing Muldis Rosetta Engines, or who are writing Muldis Rosetta core documentation, tests, or examples. It is not the main forum for the Muldis D language itself, nor is it the place for non-implementers to get help in using said.
An official IRC channel for Muldis D and its implementations is also intended, but not yet started.
Alternately, you can purchase more advanced commercial support for various Muldis D implementations, particularly Muldis Rosetta, from its author by way of Muldis Data Systems; see http://www.muldis.com/ for details.