RE: Is a RDBMS needed?

"Our Brains Are Shrinking. Are We Getting Dumber?"
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/02/132591244/our-brains-are-shrinking-are-we-getting-dumber

"The experts aren't sure about the implications of this evolutionary trend. Some think it might be a dumbing-down process. One cognitive scientist, David Geary, argues that as human society grows increasingly complex, individuals don't need to be as intelligent in order to survive and reproduce."

Chris Taylor
Sr. Oracle DBA
Ingram Barge Company
Nashville, TN 37205
Office: 615-517-3355
Cell: 615-663-1673
Email: chris.taylor_at_ingrambarge.com<mailto:chris.taylor_at_ingrambarge.com>

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From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Goulet, Richard Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2011 1:04 PM
To: dasebw_at_uwo.ca; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: Is a RDBMS needed?

Humm, Another feeble attempt to replace what 20 years+ of rdbms engineering has already done. Sorry to say that it's not the first and probably will not be the last. This is especially true with the JAVA NOSQL crowd who sooner or later have to give in to the RDBMS since they don't want to tackle the recovery, ACID compliance, and other issues that people like Oracle, Microsoft and PostGreSql (to name a few) have already fixed. Would not be the first time that a technology appeared to be the next best slice of bread only to die before getting off the pad, anyone ever hear of Ada? Few billions of US tax payer dollars went down that black hole to no good end and that was supported by one of the largest institutions in the world, the US Pentagon. So much for who supports it. BTW: If you've ever heard of PL/SQL then you've heard of Ada, by another name.

And no, you are no dinosaur. The young have to be given their chance to explore, but in the end many ideas that looked good at the time don't withstand the test of time and some are just way before their time, like the old Edsel (push button transmission where the underlying technologies had not yet matured sufficiently).

Richard Goulet
Senior Oracle DBA/Na Team Leader

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Blake Wilson Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2011 11:23 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Is a RDBMS needed?

Here at the University of Western Ontario we are looking at replacing our current Learning Management System. The current choices seem to be similar in technology and infrastructure - web tier, load balancer, application tier, back end RDBMS and some sort of content management system for the course content.

However, the next release of one of our options will not have a RDBMS in the solution. It will be replaced by Apache Jackrabbit. The new system will have everything treated as content, including grades, test questions and answers, discussion threads, syllabi, personal profiles, chat messages, and so on.

This seems like quite a departure from normal RDBMS based solutions. Is this a good idea? Am I being a dinosaur by thinking that this is not a good idea? Do I need to keep up with the times? Is this the future of databases? This really looks to me like a return to design of 20 years ago.

Thanks,
Blake Wilson

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