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Qualified name syntax/dot`.`tightfix

AntC@frederic-handel
#1 · June 28, 2025, 4:22 am

I presume table.column style has been in SQL since the beginning(s)?

Where did that syntax come from? I'm having a hard time antedating it in computer languages or mathematical notation. There's some hints it was used in Iverson's APL (early '60's), but I can't find an example -- though APL exploited every possible syntax/glyph plus plenty that proved impossible.

Maybe from early machine-level languages? Byte-position within a machine word?

Principia Mathematica 1913 used 10.2.3 style for numbering propositions. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 1921 used 1.345. But I'm looking for prename.subname. So a symbolic name rather than a number.

Was it always possible in SQL to use sth like Supplier.SNO, Qty.SNO -- that is, same subname with different prename such that the prename in effect acted as a namespace qualifier? (And so that in some sense it was the 'same' SNO across different tables.)