Re: database systems and organizational intelligence

On Thu, 27 May 2004 06:40:21 -0500, "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote:

>And an end-user writing a rule for use in a software application is writing
>code, then, right?

Yes.

> And that code is stored as data.

Not always, the code can be dropped after the generation of the data.

For instance the code for the creation of a table is seldom stored after the execution.

> I'm not saying there
>is no distinction, but it isn't easy to separate data and code into disjoint
>categories.

It does not make sense to do another thing.

> And it leads to poor design if only "the code" or only "the
>data" are designed, or even if one team designs one while another designs
>the other.

The code and the data can't be designed, you can design a database or an application.

> What's the API between code and data?

The API is the Application Programming Interface, and it is not between code and data, nor it is code nor it is data.

> Data and code are
>interwoven, interrelated and should be taken together when designing
>software, in my (current) opinion.

Of course, but they are completely different things.

Data are facts, source code are text based instructions, and machine code are sequences of operation codes.

Regards
  Alfredo Received on Thu May 27 2004 - 16:59:41 CEST