The HList library of strongly typed heterogenous lists, records, type-indexed products (TIP) and co-products is now accessible via DARCS http://darcs.haskell.org/HList/ The library contains a new representation for open records. Previously (Record.hs) a record is a Scheme-like heterogenous associative list, that is, the list of pairs of field label and the corresponding field value. The HList library uses the type of the label, therefore, the run-time representation of the label is actually `undefined'. Thus, a record built as rec1 = label1 .=. True .*. lab2 .=. 'c' .*. emptyRecord has the run-time representation HCons (undefined,True) (HCons (undefined,'c) HNil) In the new representation, RecordP.hs in the repository, the record is a heterogeneous list of field values. Label _types_ are also bundled in a heterogenous list of types, which annotate the record type as a phantom type. Thus if we write rec2 = label1 .=. True .*. lab2 .=. 'c' .*. emptyRecordP rec2 now has the run-time representation of HCons True (HCons 'c HNil) That is, labels are nowhere to be found in the run-time representation. Field labels become compile-time-only entity. Of course, by making labels Typeable and using the methods of that class it is possible to access the label information at run-time, if so desired. The new representation of the records supports the old record interface; for example, both (rec1 .!. lab2) and (rec2 .!. lab2) evaluate to 'c', the value of the field lab2. RecordP are similar to TIP; however, the values of RecordP are indexed by the label types rather than by their own types. RecordP have an advantage for representing tables -- homogenous collections of rows, which in turn are records of fields (columns): newtype Table ls vs = Table [RecordP ls vs] All records have exactly the same field types in the same sequence. The run-time representation of the table is just the collection of all the field values. The database schema, labels and the column types, is a compiled-time entity and used for checking and compiling of database operations.