Re: Date's First Great Blunder

From: mAsterdam <mAsterdam_at_vrijdag.org>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 01:34:10 +0200
Message-ID: <4085b375$0$64453$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>

Dawn M. Wolthuis wrote:

> Yes -- again IBM. Thanks! --dawn

Fairytale 1.

First there was chaos. Dijkstra came along and told us all to look for invariants to find structure.

Enter database. Trees were easiest, so: trees. (IMS)

Trees are semantically crippled, so: mazes. (CODASYL)

Don't hide reference information. (R2)

Fairytale 2.

IBM: let there be databases (IMS)

ANSI: good idea, let's standardize 'm.

IBM: No! It's our garden.

CODASYL: We have some nice flowers (SET, OWNER, MEMBER)

IBM: We don't care. Our flowers are much much much more beautiful - wait for us, but for now we only have pictures (vaporware a.k.a. relational theory).

Larry: I can grow those. Received on Tue Apr 20 2004 - 18:34:10 CDT