Re: Views for demoralizing

Dawn M. Wolthuis wrote:

> "Alfredo Novoa" <alfredo_novoa_at_hotmail.com> wrote:

>>>> IBM knows very little about the Relational Model. You should
>>>> ignore all that.
>>>
>>>Wasn't Codd an IBM employee when he wrote his early papers?
>>
>> Yes but it does not change anything. IBM never understood the RM
>> and they created the SQL aberration. Codd, Date and now Darwen
>> abandoned IBM.

> 
> When did Darwen leave IBM? I'm not in the inner circle and am 
> apparently not keeping current on such matters (perhaps the news
> didn't make People magazine?). Nevertheless, I'm sure there are
> some at IBM who would spout the same doctrine as you.
> 


>>> I'm thinking there are people at IBM who know quite a bit about

> 
> Oh really?  I know a bit about relational theory.  I once bought into it. 
> I've learned a bit more.  I'm not as gullible now. 

This is an intriguing comment, so I lobbed it to Fabian Pascal, and he asked me to follow up for him...

FP: Do me a favor and post a message in that exchange and say I am asking her to post the link to our exchange from years ago and that I am still waiting for her mathematical proof that MVDBs are relational, which she promised then. :)

And, also:

FP: You can also say that I said that Dawn is another Celko, throwing all sorts of fuzzy comments about mathematics around to scare the uninformed around and impress, without anything to back her up.

FP: Known technique and I am not gullible anymore either.

>>If still there are people at IBM who know about relational theory it
>>is clear that they don't have any decision power.

Yes. There are a number of people who know and care, but it is hard to do much when the main systems are very much based on SQL. Backwards compatibility is an incredibly heavy shackle, forever constraining that which one would like to do. People like RequiredTech (of reputed TRDBMS fame) who can start from scratch are much better off - right up until they release version 2.0. Thereafter, they are about as hobbled as everyone else. :-(

> Or perhaps they know about it, but the wealth of experience from employees > and customers of IBM might have lead them to some other conclusions.

As has been intimated elsewhere (not necessarily in this thread), there are few IBM customers who've had a chance to work with a non-SQL RDBMS. The same goes for the customers of pretty much any other supplier of SQL DBMS.

-- 
Jonathan Leffler                   #include <disclaimer.h>
Email: jleffler_at_earthlink.net, jleffler_at_us.ibm.com
Guardian of DBD::Informix v2003.04 -- http://dbi.perl.org/