Question

I've been using Reactive Cocoa (by GitHub), a Functional Reactive Programming API for use with the Cocoa libraries for a while now, but have just read "Out of the Tar Pit", the paper that supposedly presents the concepts behind it, and I am a little confused.

The paper presents (as I understand it) Functional Relational Programming, where relations between data are created with conditions that should be enforced by the FRP system to reduce the amount of 'accidental' logic and state needed.

My question is, are these two concepts - FR(eactive)P and FR(elational)P essentially the same thing (with the former just being an implementation of the latter) or is there a core difference between the two? Unfortunately at the moment my knowledge of the area isn't good enough for me to differentiate them enough.

If there is a difference, it appears to be something to do with, as the name suggests, reacting to changes in data. Certainly, Reactive Cocoa (and Rx in C#) have the concept of creating signals which are triggered on changes in data, and can be used to continuously modify a value over time.

Is this the difference? If not, what is?

(Please excuse the poor tagging, I can't find relevant tags and can't create them yet - please update the tags to something more appropriate if you can.)

No correct solution

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