Re: Announcing New Blog

From: dawn <dawnwolthuis_at_gmail.com>
Date: 11 Jan 2006 20:21:51 -0800
Message-ID: <1137039711.753911.222510@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

mountain man wrote:
> "mAsterdam" <mAsterdam_at_vrijdag.org> wrote in message
> news:43c59fa2$0$11068$e4fe514c_at_news.xs4all.nl...
> > mountain man wrote:
> >> dawn wrote:
> >>>See http://www.tincat-group.com/mewsings
> >>>Leave a comment :
> >>
> >> My impression of Codd was that he preferred to avoid the complexification
> >> via normalisation, as outlined in an article by Gittens earlier
> >> referenced
> >> ("A Codd inspired ..."
> >>
> >> OTOH my impression of Date is that he prefers to promote
> >> complexification via normalisation.
> >
> > I read some books and attended some lectures by Chris Date.
> > He doesn't shy away from difficult subjects.
> > Could that be the trigger your impression?
>
> No, there are more difficult subjects that he avoids,

To be fair, we each have subjects that are not our bailiwick, even within broader areas of expertise.

> such
> as schema evolution theory,

While I don't fault him for ignoring or underestimating some subjects, I would say that a person's opinions about how to model data can be flawed because they do not take some important things, such as schema evolution, into account.

> and omits others entirely,
> such as any formalised theoretical interface to the software
> side of the (data/software) coin. (eg: stored procs).

I agree that marginalizing either of these topics has implications and Date's writings sometimes favor "data in a vacuum" thinking.

> > Could you provide some examples?

> Normalisation of tables in order to pedantically avoid
> the use of nulls as though they were some form of an
> alien life form.

They are a shame, but if using SQL it is just a game and not highly practical to eliminate nulls. I understand going out of your way to be able to use a 2VL, but reworking the database schema repeatedly just to avoid the introduction of nulls seems silly at best and could be both risky and costly.

> Date approaches complexity ad nauseum
> but offers no simple solutions, and cannot, because of
> his data centric view of a data _processing_ environment.

I agree but still like to read what he writes. Cheers! --dawn

>
> --
> Pete Brown
> www.mountainman.com.au
Received on Wed Jan 11 2006 - 22:21:51 CST