Re: How to perform a health check?

joel-garry_at_home.com (Joel Garry) wrote in message news:<91884734.0410051033.1147b01e_at_posting.google.com>...

>
> What you say is true and correct. However, standards committees are
> just groups of vendors, aren't they?

Not at all. But even it were so, that's better than a single vendor.

> I think the real problem is you
> can't have standards (of the sort I think you propose) before the db
> products because the products are evolving too fast.

It's got nothing to do with the products. That is the whole point! While we continue to associate standards with products, it won't work. It's got to do with the technology. Administering a database has not changed that much in general principles in the last 30 years. Because it is an activity that has nothing to do with the specific technology.

I'll offer a metaphore (!):
You drive a car nowadays the same way you drove a car 30 years ago: here is a steering wheel, here is an accelerator, brake, etcetc. And when you take a driver's training course and test, no one is asking you to only drive a Ford Fiesta 2004 model. It's for ALL makes and models of cars!

Of course, IF you want to get the best out of a given model and make of car,it pays to know a little more about it. That is why BMW for example has advanced driver training courses for their buyers. Perfectly kosher. But the BASIC driver training is now more than standardised and has NOTHING to do with the vendors.

> Remember all the
> hoopla about unix style operating systems? All that got blown away by
> linux. Because linux was written by a bunch of people saying "get it
> done now and make it work with what is out there." Then
> sorta-standardized after the fact.

And yet, remarkably, it is to Unix that Linux owes it's elegance and command-line interface. The kernel itself may be different or use different technology. But the basics of operation of Unix are all there: file metaphore, programmable shell. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Unix can pick up Linux in no time at all and with minimal training. Of course, if that anyone then wants to write a device driver, a highly specialised activity, then it pays to get training on the specifics.

> If you are advocating academic-style standards setting, that will just
> be way too slow and will never become useful,

Totally disagree. It is PRECISELY because we are ignoring academic principles that training in IT is a shambles. There is a reason why universities and academia have been so useful in every field of human knowledge. We are ignoring it at our detriment. Received on Thu Oct 07 2004 - 17:07:36 CDT