Re: Resiliency To New Data Requirements

Marshall wrote:
> dawn wrote:
> >
> > I agree. If we are going to start somewhere and move forward, we might
> > be well-served to look to what works today outside of the RM (even
> > though it, of course, typically markets itself as relational). Is it
> > less expensive to work with Cache' than Oracle given such and such an
> > environment? If so, why?
>
> Is there theory behind any of this? Any mathematical models or other
> formalisms? It seems to me that comparing Cache with Oracle for
> TCO is not on-topic on c.d.t.
>
> Does any of "what works today outside of the RM" have any theory
> behind it? This is a theory newsgroup after all.

Hi Marshall. The reason I originally came to this list was to learn what it was about the theory that lead the industry down a path of throwing out some good features such as lists, which I have used as my primary example. I learned from this forum and elsewhere that the theory has come back around to now permit nested structures, while a huge amount of software implementations are stuck, for practical purposes, with the flawed theory of what was once known as 1NF.

So I want to talk about theory and its relationship to practice. We don't need another two decades of flawed tools that blindly try to follow another flawed theory. The industry had lists, then pooh-poohed them, and now is bringing them back, where "the theory" seems to now permit nested sets (although there are still many who are not ready to accept that extension of the theory), and lists are accepted if defined as user-defined types. But there are still no list operations in the theory as best I can tell. If theory people want to discuss theory sans "end users" of the theory (like me), they can do their work in a vacuum, but then perhaps the industry would be well-served if more of it (than in the past) would stay there so we don't repeat the mistakes of the past (e.g. normalization as originally defined being implemented before it was ripe).

So, while I want to talk about theory and its relationship to practice, I'm not developing theory, and I don't know the totality of the theory behind any di-graph models, for example. I suspect that there are many here who would not accept anything other than set theory (functions are sets, so I'm sure anything software developers do can be modeled as sets if someone has a reason to do so.)

Did that clarify? If so, is that, or is that not a valid discussion in this forum? (Don't worry, even if you suggest it is valid to discuss, I will still keep a low profile here as I know there are some who really, really dislike having me around and I prefer the company of those who are at least civil in their discourse when they disagree with someone, as you, David, mAsterdam, JOG, x, and many others have always been).

Cheers! --dawn Received on Thu Aug 10 2006 - 16:17:25 CEST