Re: On the subject of Data Warehouses, Data Cubes & OLAP....
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 23:05:15 -0400
Message-ID: <JyCdnde4Ia892AqiU-KYjw_at_golden.net>
"Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne_at_acm.org> wrote in message
news:bn7fp7$rnn9q$1_at_ID-125932.news.uni-berlin.de...
> In the last exciting episode, "Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote:
> > "DataMan" <dataman_at_ev1.net> wrote in message
> > news:vpdppi7ccdn0f1_at_corp.supernews.com...
> >>
> >> "Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote:
> >> >"DataMan" <dataman_at_ev1.net> wrote in message
> >> >news:vpdad0mimma52e_at_corp.supernews.com...
> >> >>
> >> >> Most OLTP systems do support the information requested. It's just
very
difficult
> >> >> to retrieve.
> >> >
> >> >That is a remarkable and very interesting assertion. What can you
offer
to
> >> >support such a remarkable assertion?
> >> >
> >> The support information or difficult to retrieve statement?
> >
> > I do not find the "support information" assertion remarkable, and I
> > doubt anyone would. What can you offer to support your remarkable
> > assertion that information is difficult to retrieve?
>
> Well, the point of the "data warehouse" systems I have observed has
> been to come up with ways of doing novel searches for patterns.
Oh, okay. I was beginning to think the point of the "data warehouse" was to turn a system with all the power of a modern dbms into a system with all the power of visicalc.
> This means making the data look like huge matrices that you can do
> regressions and such on, so that you can hire a bunch of APL
> programmers to fabricate would-be associations and patterns.
>
> The fact that APL programmers are few and far between, and that the
> "vice presidents" that are behind DW projects are two generations
> after those that decided APL was obsolete, means that the projects
> mostly fail since they don't know the _real_ kinds of skillsets they
> need.
That does clarify things. I played with Watcom APL briefly on a Commodore SuperPet about twenty years ago, but since then, I have never encountered a computer with half the symbols APL requires. Received on Thu Oct 23 2003 - 05:05:15 CEST