Re: which softeware can create database?

Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra wrote:
>Jan Hidders wrote:
>
>> Bob Badour wrote:
>>
>>> If a transmitter throws a symbol around in a forum where the symbol
>>> has a precise well-defined meaning with a longstanding history of
>>> convention without first learning what that meaning is, the
>>> transmitter contributes noise at the source and communication will
>>> only degrade from that point.
>>
>> What makes you think that the term RDBMS has "a precise well-defined
>> meaning with a longstanding history of convention"?
>
> Lots of articles and books by the "founding fathers" of the field,
>starting with EF Codd and now continuing with CJ Date et alli.

That's not enough to make it a convention. What you should look at is how the term is used in the database research community (VLDB, SIGMOD, ICDT, DBPL, et cetera) and by the people who actually implement databases, and then the picture changes quite dramatically. Note that I'm not saying that this is a good thing, on the contrary, but how you and I feel about the situation is simply irrelevant here. Perhaps if Chris Date had taken some more trouble to actually publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals the situation might have been better.

> Intellectual vandalism? Noise? I'm trying to get accross the
>difference between SQL and relational.

A noble mission and one I fully support. However, calling people uneducated and adopting a condescending attitude just because they use a term in the way it is commonly used is in my experience not a very good way to go about this task.

• Jan Hidders