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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> Re: Useful Oracle books
People that go and listen to Chris Date usually come back with a fresh
look of the world. My old friend Mogens Egan recently saw Date in London
and told everybody who cared to listen that Date had given him back his
interest for relational databases.
Mogens
Michael Milligan wrote:
> Anthony,
>
> Excellent remarks. However, you seem to pitting theory against practicality
> in a way that does not allow them to coexist. As Date would say, "Theory is
> practical!" That is actually one of his chapter names. Your example of
> preventing duplicates is a great case in point. What is the meaning of a
> result set with duplicates? What can you do with it? If I see three
> identical rows, meaning there is nothing returned to differentiate them, how
> can I, or my client use that information? I may as well just do a count.
>
> What you find anal I find brilliant. Every "i" is dotted and every "t" is
> crossed in Date's logic. It has symmetry and completeness I have rarely
> found elsewhere.
>
> Look at it this way: you may argue that there are times when we should break
> away from the theoretical to get the practical accomplished. But every time
> you "break away" from the theory, you making an exception you will have to
> keep track of and account for. Yes, you can duplicate data to prevent joins.
> But make sure you have a trigger to handle the extra update, etc., etc.
> Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it gets out of hand.
>
> I enjoyed your remarks.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike
-- Archives are at http://www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at http://www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------Received on Thu May 27 2004 - 19:19:06 CDT
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