Re: Ah, but who has better parties?

From: Laconic2 <laconic2_at_comcast.net>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 10:49:02 -0400
Message-ID: <o6-dna0y4cqBQTndRVn-uw_at_comcast.com>


"Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message news:c81cqm$k4v$1_at_news.netins.net...
> Emperical data to prove that such things as 1NF are good for us (the
> software development industry and our users) seems to me to be the
> responsible thing for us (as an industry) to collect before we go and
stick
> it to the world with implementations of untested theories.

This is where your anecdotes and mine differ.

In addition to having seen a lot of disastrous databases, I've seen quite a few databases that were well conceived, well designed and well implemented. These are databases that, I guess would be called SQL databases in this forum, but the actual impementation was in a proprietary language that preceded the adoption of SQL in that particular environment.

My anecdotal experience strongly suggests to me that the difference between a well built SQL database and a poorly built one is much greater than the differences that you've outlined between one data model and another.

That's not to say that there aren't real differences between data models, but I don't think that's the reason one group throws better parties and the other.

And, by the way, a database, and its the applications it works with, a very much like a seven year permanent party, in terms of how the people relate to each other. The bad ones are like bad parties, ones that you wish you were not at. The good ones are like good parties, ones that you hate to see end. It's about the people, not the theory. Received on Fri May 14 2004 - 16:49:02 CEST

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