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Toon Koppelaars

Rule Gen BV

 About

Toon Koppelaars studied computer science at the University of Technology in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. He is a long-time Oracle technology user, having used the Oracle database and tools software since 1987, version 4. During his career he has been involved in both application development (terminal/host in the early days, GUI client/server later on, and J2EE nowadays), as well as database administration. Within the data modeling area, the formal specification and robust implementation of data integrity rules (a.k.a. business rules) is one of his special interest areas. He is currently employed as a Managing partner at RuleGen B.V. He is a frequent presenter at Oracle related conferences. Recently he has both won the Editor's Choice Award as well as Best Speaker Award of the ODTUG-Now! conference.
Website/Blog

Papers authored by him can be found at http://web.inter.nl.net/users/T.Koppelaars

Blog http://thehelsinkideclaration.blogspot.com/

 Video
Track: ORA

Session title

Session description

Applied Mathematics for Database Professionals

Part 1: The Mathematics. The relational model of data is based on two mathematical disciplines: set theory and logic. We will introduce some of the principles help us deal with queries (and constraints for that matter), in a formal manner. The very important principle of a 'rewrite rule' will be the main topic in this part.
Part 2: Write correct SQL and know it. In Part 2 we show that some of the mathematical concepts are missing in SQL. Luckily we can apply rewrite rules to find equivalent expressions in SQL. We will show examples of queries (and constraints) that have straightforward mathematical specificaitons, but cannot be translated into SQL, without first rewriting them. So in summary, by attending this presentation, you will discover the mathematical concepts that SQL lacks, and that sometimes block you in writing a seemingly simple query. And you'll see how by first specifying such a query mathematically, you enable yourself to quickly deduce how to write the query in SQL by applying (mathematical) rewrite rules.