Linguistic reflection: a bridge from programming to database languages
David W. Stemple, Tim Sheard, Leo Fegaras · 1992
Reflection in programming denotes the ability of a program to refer to itself, possibly modifying itself, in ways that cause changes to the behavior of the program. The concept has been used mostly to refer to run-time behavior in an interpreter environment. The authors extend the term to compiler mediated computation accomplished at compile time. They show how such reflection can be used to include database capabilities in a programming language.>