Re: Multiplicity, Change and MV

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 13:26:53 GMT
Message-ID: <xO51g.61667$VV4.1151927@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>

x wrote:

> "dawn" <dawnwolthuis_at_gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1145300763.717197.303750_at_v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> 

>>Tedd wrote:
>>
>>>I'm curious to know why those companies use multivalue databases.

> 
> 

>>Yes, I am too. This has been my curiousity and off-and-on area of
>>research for the past few years. In spite of having seen numerous
>>beneifts to the MV model resulting in what appeared to me to be
>>significant budget savings, I was touting the benefits of the RM,
>>normalization, constraints, etc and advising folks to move away from
>>their Pick/MV databases a few short years ago (2001 was likely the last
>>time I was in that camp). My thinking was that products like Oracle,
>>DB2, and SQL Server were making enough gains in tackling some of the
>>benefits of MV (with changes in SQL: '99 and products adding features
>>unrelated to the RM, for example) and had the added benefit of
>>standardization (e.g. ability to point Excel at an ODBC data source)
>>and the mathematical elegance of the RM (e.g. set processing and
>>modeling constraints and facts as propositions, then employing
>>predicate logic).

> 
> 
> I think you are right in practice and wrong in theory :-)
> I think the programmers are more productive with the tools that make sense
> to them.
> When in school, after "learning" some relational model theory (I don't
> really learned it in school, but after reading the Codd's papers) I could
> not comprehend SQL. By contrast I had little problems with QBE (not the one
> in MS Access which does not make sense to me).
> 
> When I cannot understand something I suspect something is fishy about it.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD498.html

What EWD said about COBOL goes triple for Pick. Received on Tue Apr 18 2006 - 08:26:53 CDT