Re: Nearest Common Ancestor Report (XDb1's $1000 Challenge)

On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:50:39 GMT, Lee Fesperman wrote:

>Lee Fesperman wrote:
>> Neo is completely without integrity ... changing his software in an attempt to prevent
>> you from claiming the prize. Who would buy a database from this man?
>
>Let me add this, since it has not been mentioned. Before issuing his challenge, Neo had
>every chance to select the absolute best problem to illustrate how his 'thing' (XDb1) is
>better than an off-the-shelf SQL DBMS. He failed!
>
>Additionally, no one knows how much he tuned his product to win, even to the point of
>hardcoding output, prior to issuing the challenge.

Hi Lee,

I have little trust in Neo's honesty, but I don't think he'd sink *that* low. But still - I did contemplate using an INSERT trigger on the hierarchies table to keep the ancestors table current while inserting data. I decided against it, because I thought it would be unfair if XDb1 didn't use such a technique.

But on the other hand - there's no way for me to know that XDb1 does NOT use such a technique....

>It appalls me how many are taken in by snake oil salesman (thanks for the quote, Bob
>Badour) like Neo who claim to have a better solution than the relational model. The
>relational model was invented and published over thirty years ago. In all that time,
>there has been no serious challenger for an alternate data model. Why do people want to
>believe that some shyster can do it? Oh well, there's a sucker born every minute.
>
>Silver bullets are only good for werewolves ;^)

I just hope that my entry to Neo's challenge and the discussions that followed will serve to protect some innocent people who would otherwise have fallen for Neo's tricks.

I also hope that Neo is feeling embarassed enough by now to not post in these newsgroups again.

Best, Hugo

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