Re: In an RDBMS, what does "Data" mean?

"Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message news:cbg6qq$ld$1_at_news.netins.net...
>
> Now take the information about a typical problem domain in a business. Take
> an expert in R and an expert in M and have them immerse themselves in the
> domain and then prepare R and M models, respectively. It is my experience
> (i.e. sans proof) that a) more information will be encoded in M b) the
> information will be easier to retrieve from M and c) the implementation in M
> will be easier to modify than the one in R (and then for those who care
> about performance, given that is the biggest killer of software projects, M
> will likely also perform better -- oh, and then there's the difference in
> hard and soft costs associated with R & M ...)

These claims are intriguing, but I note that they are all a-theoretical. (Whether true or not.) Which is not to say they are not important; they are. I'm just not sure whether they're on-topic.

In any event, the longer this conversation continues, the more I become convinced that to the extent these things are true, they are due to the cramped, 1960s feel of SQL, and not due to the relational model per se.

Marshall Received on Sat Jun 26 2004 - 20:12:06 CEST