Re: Oracle and PICK

"Bill H" <wphaskett_at_THISISMUNGEDatt.net> wrote in message news:3r2hc.172867$K91.437350_at_attbi_s02...
> Dan:
>
> >"Dan" <guntermannxxx_at_verizon.com> wrote in message
>
> [snipped]
>

<snip>
Unlike other RDBMS products, pick-like applications control the dbms, not
> the other way around. I always look at an RDBMS like the students in a
> religious school: uniforms, clean, sitting up straight, saying "yes
> sir/mam", doing the work quietly, etc. I see a pick-like dbms as a public
> high school, where everyone wears different clothes, draws grafitti on the
> lockers, smokes out back by the auto shop, talks in class, etc.

Very good -- made me smile. However, I would add that this shows up one of the RDBMS mindsets -- there is an implied power hierarchy with the DBA's (teachers) protecting the database (society) from the application software developers (students). With PICK, as with old indexed sequential file systems (VSAM,ISAM) the developer can botch up a lot of things, but I've never seen an RDBMS (or DBMS) environment where the app developer couldn't do that anyway.

A software developer sometimes thinks like the following: "constraints that I, personally, cannot remove are obstacles in my path and I have to figure out how to work around them". Working around obstacles is what an application software developer needs to do all throughout the development process -- they are good at it. In shops or people where there is not a sense that the application software developer has "power" to make their own path in altering constraints, they work around them, sometimes coming up with really clever work-arounds (and that is NOT what we want, right?).

Give software developers freedom and they will take responsibility.

--dawn Received on Tue Apr 20 2004 - 15:15:04 CEST