The major topic of this book is the integration of data and programming
languages and the associated methodologies. To my knowledge, this is the
first book on modern programming languages and programming meth- odology
devoted entirely to database application environments. At the same time,
it is written with the goal of reconciling the relational and
object-oriented approaches to database management. One of the reasons
that influenced my decision to write this book is my dissatisfaction
with the fact that the existing books on programming methodology and the
associated concepts, techniques, and programming language notation are
largely based on mathematical problems and math- ematically oriented
algorithms. As such, they give the impression that modern program
structures, associated techniques, and methodologies, not to speak of
the formal ones, are applicable only to problems of that sort. Although
important, such problems are of limited applicability and scale. This
does not apply to books in which modem concepts, techniques,
methodologies, and programming language notation are applied to systems
programming. But, even so, this does not demonstrate that in entirely
application-oriented problems-those in which modern computer tech-
nology is most widely used-modern programming methodology is just as
important. This book is meant to be a step toward providing a more
convincing support of such a claim and, thus, is based entirely on
common, what one might call business-oriented, problems in which
database technology has been successfully used.