Re: foundations of relational theory?

From: Costin Cozianu <c_cozianu_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 09:44:50 -0700
Message-ID: <bn90jm$v26f2$1@ID-152540.news.uni-berlin.de>

Andrew McAuley wrote:

>>In other words, you can't have it both ways. Either we compare theories,
>>in which case your side has all the weapons, or we compare reality,

>
>
> In fairness - people posting from CDT are doing exactly that, and an
> interesting academic exercise it is as well. I'm just a little surprised
> that they can be bothered to argue the point with us in CDP. It seems self
> evident that Pick and it's derivatives are not as theoretically pure nor as
> mathematically compliant as a theoretical database. But so what? The world
> is full of compromise - as early adopters of Betamax would tell you. The
> point is we believe that we are able to get the job done, and millions of
> successful installations tend to add substance to that belief. I enjoy a
> theoretical debate as much as the next person but I'm not about to allow
> that to prevent me using tools that work. FWIW (which given the length and
> extent of this debate is very little - sorry).
>
>

Your argument is as valid as one for the millions of installations for COBOL indexed files.

That "it works" is no big deal, it's a precondition.

That it supposedly work better than say Oracle, you haven't made any case. Actually by any reasonable intepretation of generally available facts, a reasonable person can only drawe the conclusion that Pick is obsolete and much inferior to modern DBMSes. The conspiracy of silence theory for both the academic world and the commercial world, is too smelly to hold any water. And the rubish arguments with regards to head movement, don't make any headway either, but betray the way of thinking stucked in the computing world of the 80's when head movements did count.

So unlike you complain a lot of people in c.d.t are too patien tly waiting for you to make the case. But apparently no one on c.d.p is articulate enough and knowledgeable enough to do it.

And when you can't express yourself you can always whine and accuse your audience of bigotry, closed mindedness and other non-sense.

This is pretty lame. Received on Thu Oct 23 2003 - 11:44:50 CDT