Re: Pizza Example

"Anthony W. Youngman" <wol_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<hPBPoREMoFgAFwuB_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk>...
> In message <c57407$qn6$1_at_news.netins.net>, Dawn M. Wolthuis
> <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> writes
> >Well, I know several text book answers -- for example, using an RDBMS makes
> >changes to software database applications less expensive and less risky. My
> >experience tells me the opposite.
> >
> >Then there is the text book answer that says that "relational theory" is
> >based on mathematics and logic and a relation is the simplest form of
> >construct that fully addresses data modeling, therefore, it must be right.
> >I have pointed out that a mathematical model is simply a metaphor and that
> >there is nothing mathematical about the statement that the simplest model is
> >the best.
>
> And without scientific evidence to show that the maths is *relevant*,
> who gives a sh*t if the maths is perfectly correct. If it disagrees with
> reality, the fact that it is "correct" is useless.

You could say the evidence is found in the fact that it clearly works.  You may not like it, but despite your bogus claims that data is "lost" by being normalised, the fact is it does work.

> >The text book might indicate that using a DBMS provides us with constraint
> >logic that protects the integrity of the database not just from end-user
> >data, but from the mistakes of application software developers, thus helping
> >us have a DBMS that is not specific to a single application. I have
> >personal experience with several instances where this is true, but a lot
> >more where it either didn't matter or where having such constraints
> >specified made software developers "code around" the constraints.
>
> And how often is that "protection" worthless, because the DBA is also
> the programmer? Quite often, I suspect :-)

You presume all mistakes are deliberate and malicious! There have been many occasions where I, as the person who created the database and its constraints, have been glad to find that mistakes in my own application code have been caught by my own constraints. And besides me there might be perhaps 30 other developers writing application code who could also make mistakes that would get caught by those constraints. Received on Sun Apr 18 2004 - 12:53:03 CEST