Re: Database vs. DBMS

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:U1imd.343075$wV.288099_at_attbi_s54...
> I just want to go on record as saying that I find the
> whole pedantic insistence on differentiating between
> a database and a dbms tiresome and counterproductive.
> It isn't "precise"; it's ostentatious. Humans are
> very, very good at disambiguating, and I've never
> seen anyone confuse a database and a dbms,
> even when the wrong term was used.
>
> People don't confuse classes and objects either,
> even if their diction would lead you to believe
> otherwise.
>
>
> Marshall
>
>

Most of the time I agree. I almost all the cases I've seen recently the corrector knew or should have known that the original poster was aware of the difference. And the correction was a pedantic correction of usage rather than a substantive correction of the idea itself. It's rhetoric, nothing more.

There is one tiny exception I'd like to make. When we get close to the end of a discussion, and we are about to add some concept to the "commonly agreed concepts", we might choose to make sure we use the correct term, even if some of us have been using each term during the discussion. For example, additions to the glossary should use the correct term. This is being formal, not pedantic. Received on Tue Nov 16 2004 - 13:05:55 CET