Zarf's Journal: Do you know what a 4GL is?

Not all that surprizingly I see a lot of misuse of terminology in my work in the IT feild. I occasionally work with people who insist on mis-using a term. This time the term was 4GL.

The argument was over "real" 4GL languages and how MySQL didn't provide one. I mentioned that SQL was technically a 4GL and that MySQL provided that. The response, "How can it be 4GL it's not even procedural?" It turns out that 4GLs are by definition non-procedural.

After 25 years working with databases I'm sure they just forgot.

Moo

[Chacham]

So much for the standard definition.

I define a "generation" as using the generation before it.

0GL - The processor itself. For comparison, in networking, this is called the physical layer.

1GL - Uses the processor directly. This would have to be machine code.

2GL - Uses the only 1GL, machine code. This is Assembly. It assigns hard coded mnemonics to the machine codes (basic stuff in CS), lets the use assign mnemonics to the stored data (basic stuff in DS), and allows for macros by using more than one pass whil

Re:Moo

[Zarf]

http://sel.gsfc.nasa.gov/website/documents/study-b r/gls.htm [nasa.gov] ... 'nuf said.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

Not bad.

Though it translates it based on current implentations rather than theoretical truth.