If I'll ever meet Aliens I'm sure lists, sets, hash tables, and trees are in their CS books as well. But I bet their mainstream DB model may really be different than our relational one.
Edit: I reflected a bit more on the issue. It seems like that our mainstream DB model is clearly due to the kind of applications computers were mainly used for when the DB technology was developing: business application programs.
Imagine a DB technology emerging instead in completely different scenarios, like social applications where you need to update the status of users in a chronological way. Or a DB designed where most softwares had to deal with geo locations... as you can see the DB model is much more an ad-hoc affair.
A DB modeled after the fundamental data structures like Redis may not be the perfect fit for everything but should be able to model any kind of problem eventually without too much efforts, and with a very clear understanding of what will be needed in terms of storage and access time.
> If I'll ever meet Aliens I'm sure lists, sets, hash tables, and trees are in their CS books as well. But I bet their mainstream DB model may really be different than our relational one.
I actually doubt that. The relational database model (relational algebra/calculus, tuples, etc.) is a mathematical model. I would expect aliens to have essentially the same model, actually, just like I'd expect them to have the same set theory we do. They're equally as basic.
I don't agree: the relational model is a pretty specific and ad-hoc idea that can be mathematically modeled using trivial math structures. For sure they could understand it in a second and recognize this as part of their math, but will their mainstream database systems be modeled after the same model? I doubt it.
Instead I would expect to see lists, hashes, trees, and most of our sorting algorithms in their code as well.
Edit: I reflected a bit more on the issue. It seems like that our mainstream DB model is clearly due to the kind of applications computers were mainly used for when the DB technology was developing: business application programs.
Imagine a DB technology emerging instead in completely different scenarios, like social applications where you need to update the status of users in a chronological way. Or a DB designed where most softwares had to deal with geo locations... as you can see the DB model is much more an ad-hoc affair.
A DB modeled after the fundamental data structures like Redis may not be the perfect fit for everything but should be able to model any kind of problem eventually without too much efforts, and with a very clear understanding of what will be needed in terms of storage and access time.