Re: Resiliency To New Data Requirements

dawn wrote:
> [snippage]
> I'm OK if relational theory doesn't cover working with lists as long as
> relational theory is not all that is employed. We can use set
> processing for some things and pull in the list processing for others.
> It is only when relational operators demand exclusivity at some level
> that I have a problem with it.

Relational operators only demand exclusivity at the bottom level. Anything you want you can layer on top. From your posts I figure that's good enough for you ;)

> [snippage]
> > I have personal friendships with some of the most influential people in
> > hypertext and the internet. To a man they all loathe the hideous mess
> > that is the web
>
> And all of the women in software development in my county (OK, there
> might be another one somewhere) think it is beautiful in its
> usefulness, simplicity (well, maybe not, I can't believe how hard it
> was to make css and xhtml work in both IE and FF)

Quite. The www is only a dog compared to what it could be like. Its still pretty damn useful as it is.

> > It is a publishing medium (and a poor shadow of what it
> > could have been at that),
>
> Wouldn't it be better to say "could be"?

No, I think the web is too entrenched now. It'd take a revolution not an evolution.

>
> > but can hardly be processed as a data model.
> > I'm guessing that your reference to www was tongue in cheek.
>
> It was a counter-example. Your words were "information handling" so it
> worked.

But you knew what I meant dawn, and were just being polemic. Paper holds information, but its not gonna be too hot for data modelling.

> [snippage]
> > and hey we know from irreducible tuples,
> > that a lot of information _cannot_ be broken down into binary form.
> > Thats exactly why graph databases and the Semantic Web are such a load
> > of tosh.
>
> I just deleted a clever response here, but the upshot is that I've read
> quite a bit of the semantic web stuff and I'm not a believer yet
> either.

There is no clever response that can't be refuted when it comes to the semantic web ;) It's a dead man walking because of RDF's ternary nature (although it may be a long walk).

> [snippage]
> And I do like Tutorial-D's group and ungroup that at least gets at some
> of what I want. Add in a few more features for list handling at the top
> level, permit synonyms (of different types), and a bunch of other
> features and we just might be able to combine a good theory with good
> practice.

Well that's certainly a change in standpoint. (I have a great deal of respect for those who can change their opinions after doing the research, especially after being on the wrong end of a lot of stick) Nothing wrong with layers on top of RM and I agree group/ungroup normal form is very interesting.

> Pick is practical in a big bang for the buck way.
> Relational theory is elegant in a mathematical way. I don't want to
> cheat on either theory or practice, but if they aren't going to align,
> I'm stickin' with practical and flexible.
> Cheers! --dawn

I'm a firm believer that we can, in the end, get everything we want from building up theory without resorting to diving in headfirst with ad-hoc models. Its always just a case of clarifying and iterating theory to get there. (i.e. Codd's legacy is certainly not dead).

Jim. Received on Wed Aug 16 2006 - 02:57:45 CEST