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

Hi Neo,

Good grief! I've been away from this discussion for two days and now I keep seeing the same message over and over again! Is it my reader, your posting software or did you actually think your arguments become more convincing if you just repeat them over and over again. (Be warned - I have two children, aged 7 and 8, so I am quite familiar with this technique and I can assure that it won't work on me.)

Answers in-line between the quote. I'll send this to just the first of your seven identical messages and leave the other six unanswered.

On 3 Jun 2004 18:35:31 -0700, Neo wrote:

>> I changed my model ...now down to 11.0 ms ...
>> ... better than the 16 ms that XDb1 needs...
>
>Because RM solutions (1, 2 and 4) thus far aren't nearly as normalized
>or generic as XDb1's, they fail under a broader scope of data. Below
>is such data:

"broader"? Broader than *what*? Broader than the scope you outlined in your challenge message? Yes, you can bet your sweet bippy that my RM solutions (1 and 2 only - I won't take ANY responsibility for the mess you wrote yourself and went on to call RM#4) will fail under a "broader" scope. They won't roast the toast either, as I'm sure that XDb1 v7.18.4 someday will. Who cares?

It's really quite simple, Neo. You set a challenge. You outlined the requirements and promised a reward for the first to fulfill those requirements. I entered the challenge. I met all the requirements you stated. And then you started stating additional requirements, producing new versions of XDb1 and making a fool out of yourself.

What will it be, Neo? Will you finally admit that I've done exactly what you asked? Are you going away? Or will you really go on making a fool out of yourself, throwing away what's left of your credibility (if any)?

>Enter a small hierarchy of 3 things, where god is the parent of an
>unnamed person, and god is also the parent of a person with three
>names (string 'john', integer 100, decimal 3.14). Although the data
>may not seem sensible, think of it in a broader scope: a thing which
>doesn't have an attribute and a thing which has an attribute with
>three values, each of different type.
>
>Below is XDb1's script to model the above hierarchy (older versions of
>XDb1 will not process the below sentences correctly; however, the
>equivalent can be accomplished via their GUI or API or the db can be
>downloaded from website):
>
(snip script)
>
>Right-clicking on god and selecting 'Anc Report' generates the
>following where the unnamed thing's classes (and attributes, if any)
>are printed, and all values for name of the second person are printed.
>
>Common 'parent' Report for 'god'
>ThingX ThingY CmnAnc Dist
>person john 100 3.14 god 2
>Time Elapsed: 0.906550 msec

How does this small hierarchy of 3 things relate to the challenge you posted (http://tinyurl.com/yvm5g) almost three weeks ago? There is nothing in that message that even hints at the requirement of storing nameless or multiple-named things. You just added that in later. And the fact that you had to update XDb1 to accept this input without kludging through the GUI or programming through the API shows that the version of XDb1 that was current when you set the challenge couldn't do this either.

>RM solutions thus far, lack the normalization and genericness to
>represent the above data.

Both RM#1 and RM#2 are, as requested for this challenge, "using the relational model (...) from normalized and NULL-less data". I dared you several times salready to show which of the normalization rules of the relational model my solution violates. I quoted Codd's definitions of the normal forms, with URL. You just need to state which of these definitions I misunderstood when I called my model normalized. Or you may provide a URL to an alternate description of normalization IN THE RELATIONAL MODEL.

> If RM's solution could be updated to
>accommodate the above, we will be one step closer to making an
>apple-to-apple comparison.

I'm not interested in apples, nor in comparisons. This discussion is about a challenge you set, not about benchmarking.

Best, Hugo

-- 

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