Re: ROBUST:Please dont' use it this term.

Louis Marchand wrote:
>
> People who use the term ROBUST:
> Forgive me for this post but several of the responses concerning
> 'Oracle vs. SQLServer' have contained uses of the word 'robust' and I
> find terribly irritating. What, EXACTLY, does the term 'robust' mean.
> I'd sure like a clear and unequivocal definition of the term. Is there
> a benchmark test of DBMS A vs. DBMS B which shows that DBMS A doesn't
> corrupt (eg. tables don't become corrupt or indexes don't become corrupt
> or... ) as frequently as DBMS B and is that why a person would call DBMS
> A more 'robust' than DBMS B? Can you justify your use of this term? If
> not, then don't use it. I've seen 'robust' used so many times, it's
> become cliche. Please, I beg you, dont' use it unless you can really
> justify it in some sort of quantitatve way. The experts on SQLServer
> (eg. Neil Pike, Kalen Delany, Brian Moran... forgive me if I've
> misspelled your name) never use it. The software development community
> uses it to death. I feel it's a term used to bullshit people who aren't
> computer literate. To sound sophisticated...
>
> Forgive me if I'm out of line on this. I don't mean to piss anyone off.
>
> Louis Marchand
> march014_at_tc.umn.edu
> OR
> louis.marchand_at_connects.com

I see what you're saying, but I think the word is as meaningful as most other words in the English language, and despite the fact it is overused has still managed to remain that way. It does not have scientific precision unless it is operationally defined, as you pointed out. When someone is describing their general impression of something, it is a useful word, as useful as someone's general impression, which may be, not very, but sometimes people don't have the precision available that you are asking for. No matter how many benchmarks we have, we are still going to want to hear the opinions of people who are familiar with product.

Regards,
-Mike Bilhartz Received on Thu Apr 03 1997 - 00:00:00 CEST