Re: Dawn doesn't like 1NF

From: Dawn M. Wolthuis <dwolt_at_tincat-group.comREMOVE>
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 12:14:17 -0500
Message-ID: <ck195d$iic$1_at_news.netins.net>


"Alfredo Novoa" <alfredo_at_ncs.es> wrote in message news:41641697.22245703_at_news.wanadoo.es...
> On Wed, 6 Oct 2004 10:31:06 -0500, "Dawn M. Wolthuis"
> <dwolt_at_tincat-group.comREMOVE> wrote:
>
> > I am not. So, what is it of which you are convinced?
>
> You are a self proclaimed "Pickie" and you want to manage the data in
> the primitive Pick way.

I can imagine that I have called myself that, but that is because I like the data model. I have never been a Pick programmer myself. I'm much more likely to write code in Java than in any procedural language, including scripting languages. I didn't see any Pick product until around 1990, as a manager, and when I saw it, I said "that's not a database!" But, then, much to my surprise, I found my team much more productive than any other development environment I had ever encountered, including indexed sequential files, IMS, and Oracle database management systems and associated software languages and tools. In spite of having coded in Fortran, BASIC, Pascal, Java and other languages, I would consider myself to have been really, really fluent in only one language -- COBOL, specially CICS COBOL (it's tough for a former mathematics person to admit this, but I'm finally willing to). So, even if I called myself a "pickie", it would be a mistake to write me off as such, OK? ;-)

> Some months ago I have the displeasure to assist to a Pick
> reincarnation product presentation, and they implemented all the
> queries transversing nested lists using "for" instructions.

That is an implementation issue, not a problem with the data model.

> I said that it is very laborious to implement queries in that way, and
> their response was: "It works!".

Most pick shops use the standard pick query language, which goes by so many names that I'll just refer to it as the MultiValue Query Language.

> I desisted to make more questions.

I can imagine.

>
> Regards

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Cheers! --dawn Received on Wed Oct 06 2004 - 19:14:17 CEST

Original text of this message