[Haskell-cafe] Finally tagless and abstract relational Algebra

[Günther Schmidt]

Hi Jacques,

well in short my post is supposed to pretty much lay bare my lack of 
understanding of the problem I try to solve, with the hope that someone 
is willing to fill the gaps.

I do know that I could express my algorithms via list-comprehension or 
in a List Monad, all using tuples. And that would be concrete and 
grossly inefficient.

But I also wouldn't be able to express an incorrectly typed term 
*thanks* to using tuples.

So how would it be possible to express selecting /field/ b from /record/ 
x and field c from record y, creating record z, while making sure that 
record x does have field b and record y does have field c? I mean design 
a syntax for it?

Günther


Am 28.12.09 16:15, schrieb Jacques Carette:
> Günther Schmidt wrote:
>    
>> My guess is that finally tagless style allows one to create a syntax
>> without any initial dependency to an implementation. Ie. once one has
>> created the syntax in this style one can then proceed to construct terms.
>>      
> Yes.
>
>    
>> So this is my goal, create a syntax for relational algebra, express an
>> abstract relational algorithm in this syntax and worry about
>> implementation / compilation / evaluation *later*. But at least being
>> able to express a correctly typed term.
>>      
> Good plan.  But syntax design is hard, whatever style you choose.
>
>    
>> I presume I will need to employ HList at some point, but I'm not
>> entirely certain where. Will I need it at the very beginning, as
>> constrains in the syntax so that only correct abstract terms can be
>> built, or will I need it in on of the interpreters / compilers later?
>>      
> You will not need HList for constraining the syntax -- Haskell's type
> system should already provide all you need to constrain the syntax.  In
> fact, in tagless final style (rather than in initial style), for the
> lambda calculus you don't even need GADTs to deal with exotic terms!
>
> Why do you think you'll have to use HList?  While HList is great, in
> this particular instance, I don't think you'll need it.
>
> Jacques
>    

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