Re: database systems and organizational intelligence

"Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message news:c97rmt$p2v$1_at_news.netins.net...
> and nothing I have seen today permits me to specify even as simple a
> constraint as "this attribute is limited to values in this table/column"
so
> that the constraint logic can be employed when tossing up a list in a GUI,
> validating data coming in via an xml document and storing data in a
> database.

Exactly - both are manifestations of the same foreign key constraint, which is simply a specific (and common) form of constraint. Note that this also constrains the UI - specifically, a foreign key constraints lets you derive something like the contents of a listbox...

> We end up telling the software WHAT so many times, that we have
> to figure out a better way and FREE THE CONSTRAINTS and
"constraint-handling
> engine" from proprietary DBMS software. [Sorry, I'm must be in a rant
mood]

Couldn't agree more!

> I have no problem at all with the fact that we have better approaches to
> quality, scalability, reliability, etc than 20 years ago and are much
better
> equipped to build skyscrapers, but if you want to teach how to build a dog
> house before teaching how to build a house, you still need to teach most
of
> the same languages and tools. So, we teach loop concepts instead and
leave
> configuration management for the real world.

> Java does use (an updated) Pascal machine (JVM) and is reasonable for
> teaching general programming concepts, but perhaps the change is that
> programming is now such a tiny percent of what is required to build
software
> compared to what it used to be.

Or perhaps (thinking optimistically) we're coming back to programming as statements of logic and symbolic manipulation, rather than "do this. now do this. now do this..." - operational, processor-like thinking that people are bad at.

> I'm a services fan, trying not to use the SOA buzzword (or "web services"
or
> "grid").

Me too, mostly because it's just another manifestation of the separation of implementation from interface, which many programming languages make very difficult (Java's "new" keyword, anyone? Oops, better write some factories...)

• erk