(OT) Re: On view updating

robert wrote:
> Laconic2 wrote:

>>For example,  take one of those COBOL flat files people who can't stand
>>normalized data,  and want separate columns for
>>"April_Sales", "May_Sales",  etc.  I've given them views with
>>crosstabulating queries in them,  in order to keep them from forming a lynch
>>mob.

Story-time!

(Don't remember who told me this story,
and I did not care to STFW, so I could
tell it as I remember it).

Three clever apes live happily in a cage.  From the ceiling, just out of their reach, hangs a delicious banana.
In the corner there is a chair.
They do not use it to get to the banana. Every time they did, a nasty keeper would point a water-ray on them which would thow them off their feet (and hands). Soon they learned that the banana is really out of reach. Even looking at it to openly would be risking severe blows from the other apes.
So, they do not use the chair to get to the banana.

Take out one ape, enter a new ape.
The new ape, naturally, tries to get the banana. After a few quarrels he learns: "We don't do that here!".

Take out one old ape, enter a new ape.
The new ape, naturally, tries to get the banana. After a few quarrels he learns: "We don't do that here!".

Take out the last old ape, enter a new ape. The new ape, naturally, tries to get the banana. After a few quarrels he learns: "We don't do that here!".

"We don't do that here!" - even if nobody knows why anymore.

Due to technology changes there are a lot of bananas that have come within reach more or less recently. We don't use them, "We don't do that here!". Received on Tue Sep 21 2004 - 23:17:20 CEST