Re: foundations of relational theory? - some references for the truly starving

All I have to say is if Pick is so bad, why does it provide IBM with 40% of its VAR income?

Somebody must be using it to produce that much income.

Eugene

"Costin Cozianu" <c_cozianu_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:bn4ri6$rscgq$1_at_ID-152540.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Tony Gravagno wrote:
> > Costin Cozianu <c_cozianu_at_hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>You could compensate if you wanted by a careful thought out scientific
> >>work to prove exactly what your model buys the user.
> >
> >
> > Not to disagree with you Costin, most of your arguments seem to be on
> > the mark. People seem to be butting heads on the theoretical merits
> > of Pick compared to Relational. Scientific work be damned, it's fast
> > and easy to create and maintain a Pick-based business application and
> > database. You don't need DBA's or MBA's in a Pick shop because it's
> > dirt simple to keep the system running with minimal information (and
> > yes, there is admittedly minimal information available about this
> > system).
> >
>
> So is Microsoft Access and Fox Pro and Paradox. Who gives a damn about
> these ?
>
> Without a scientific work describing what the features are, what are the
> integrity consttraints, expressive power, is it relationally complete,
> is the language declarative, etc, etc, I'm sorry but I can only
> disregard your model as a matter of principle, just the same that we
> have to disregard anybody who claims that he has a perpetuum mobile, or
> he has a valid pyramidal scheme.
>
> > There are many anecdotes about sites who have tried to migrate to
> > relational environments away from their old Pick systems, spending
> > millions (no exaggeration) of dollars on good systems and top notch
> > people, only to find that they simply could not duplicate or improve
> > upon the existing functionality even after a couple years of
> > development.
>
> There is a vast amount, approximately >80% in my estimation of people in
> the industry that are unqualified. if software engineering would have
> the same maturity with say practicing medicine, 80% of the people would
> have to be fired on the spot.
>
> Including the guys who claim to be "top-notch".
>
> So here it goes your acnedotal evidence out on the window from the first
> spot
>
> Sure we pat ourselves on the back and bask in the
> > limelight of such failures, forgetting for a moment that most of the
> > world seems to function just fine without such problems. But when we
> > talk about "what the model will buy the user" we need to consider the
> > bottom line: people spend money on technology as a means of making
> > more money.
>
> Sure. If PickDB offers me the same relational features as say, Oracle
> I'm ready to consider it for the next project. If all it offers is
> instead a development toolkit a la FoxPro, or no integrity constraints
> and limited declarative query , or problematic concurrency control, or
> doesn't have convenient or production ready language bindings for Java,
> C#, C++, Visual Basic, then forget about it, right away.
>
> How can I judge these for myself ? I am not going to read it from
> marketing brochure, or am I ?
>
> I am not going to download and setup ellaborate load tests, and learn
> the stupid damn thing, or am I ?
>
> This attitude of "try and you'll be enlightened" is completely idiotic
>
>
> Well, our technologies yield a major ROI with a minimal
> > TCO, regardless of whether the model is defective in the minds of
> > theorists. The IT industry prides itself as a growth-oriented
> > industry but that growth rides on the backs of businesses with basic
> > needs like processing their data. Come now, why are you using a
> > relational database? Surely not because it's a superior model, but
> > because that's where the bucks are, and the bucks are there because
> > it's "the standard". Pick people pride themselves on providing good
> > software to run businesses at a low cost. That very advantage is
> > unfortunately what's doomed this industry - no bucks means no new
> > blood. Once again Darwin shows us that natural selection has nothing
> > to do with being the best at anything but spreading one's seed.
> >
>
> This is the most BS crap you can produce.
>
> If it was that smart Pick Db can blow out at least TPC-W and TPC-H which
> are sufficiently technology neutral, at price performance comparison.
>
> >
> >>You can't blame the "theorists" when you have very practical and serious
> >>problems, like for example your clients investing in an obsoleted
> >>technology with problematic future.
> >
> >
> > Obsoleted by whom?
>
> Obsoleted by 'c'est la vie' obsoletion algorithm. Obsoleted by the fact
> that novody seems to care about it anymore.
>
> > Why problematic? I agree that this industry
> > probably has a life of (going on an optomistic limb) 20 years, which
> > gives most people here some time to retire. But the issues have
> > nothing to do with theory or science and everything to do with lack of
> > marketing on the part of Pick people and simple ignorance on the part
> > of people who assume relational is the only "real" model.
>
> The ignorance charge goes also the other way around.
>
> You guys don't understand that there's nothing special in Pick/MV model
> that SQL DBMSes do not have. So yes, it is the only real model, as long
> as MV model is subsumed by the relational model.
>
> "Welcome to
> > Databases 101 where we will discuss the relational model and the SQL
> > queries used to manipulate them." Yea, very scientific...
> >
> >
>
> Yes, it is.
>
> >
> >>And it is ridiculous for you guys to
> >>whine that theorists disregard your model, actually they don't, it's
> >>described in all theory books (now that I know it's actually about
> >>nested relations), they just are not so crazy about its virtues.
> >
> >
> > I can't find a single book in my small personal collection (including
> > Celko, Date/Darwen, Rolland, Codd, Oracle, DB2, Sybase, SQL Server,
> > mySQL, DB fundamentals, Intro to SQL, Databases books for Dummies,
> > yada yada yada) that mentions the Pick model.
>
> As somebody already mentioned it's the nested relation (aka NFNF)
> extension to the classical relational model. Yes, nobody mentions Pick,
> big deal, as nobody mentions Informix database model.
>
> This is treated in some 14 pages in, Abiteboul, Hull and Vianu,
> Foundations of databases which is *the* reference on database theory,
> and in all introductory text books (like Date's Introduction to Database
> Systems, Bernstein Lewis and Kifer, and all others ).
>
> The other books you mentioned are irrelevant.
>
> Costin
>
Received on Wed Oct 22 2003 - 15:04:49 CEST