Re: Is relational theory irrelevant?

"Serge Rielau" <srielau_at_ca.eye-bee-m.com> wrote in message news:bpc4ci$ogk$1_at_hanover.torolab.ibm.com... [snip]
> When looking at relational algebra on one side and application
> programers at the other there is one problem:
> Application programers outnumber academicians by 100:1.
> The application programer who truly understands realtional processing is
> a rare exception.

> Any company that tries to map the theory to teh praxis will therefore
> have to make compromises between:
> a) keeping the model clean
> b) making the language usable by the users (application programers)
> c) making the execution fast.

BTW, I reject that a) and c) are mutually incompatible (in the long term)

As for b), the compromise there is caused by lack of user education. And the only solution is to properly educate them. If you product is strong enough, then you can raise a barrier of entry that requires users to understand your model. Our problem is that we do not require our users (both AD staff and end users) to understand the model (even though it would be to their great long term benefit). Heck we don't even require our database designers and DBAs to understand the model. Rather we require them all to understand various *more complex* ad-hoc and Byzantine sets of rules, fuzzed concepts and lore instead of a clean, minimal, orthogonal logical model.

Regards
Paul Vernon
Business Intelligence, IBM Global Services Received on Tue Nov 18 2003 - 13:31:11 CET