Re: Lucid statement of the MV vs RM position?

"dawn" <dawnwolthuis_at_gmail.com> wrote in message news:1145876147.906318.218720_at_j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

> > I agree with you about the large number of crap designs, which I call
> > "stupid database tricks". But I think the solution is to teach better
> > design skills, and develop better platforms, rather than to dismiss
the
> > RM.
>
> We can do both ;-) We ought not dismiss relations, nor modeling with
> relations, but we do need to go beyond the RM to include lists, for
> example, which the Information Principle (of the RM) does not permit.

This is a far cry from your earlier rants, where you basically said, "Now that Ed Codd is dead, we can bury him!" and, by implication, his life's work along with him. "And now we can stop normalizing data."

A good data architect, whether a programmer or not, will know how to normalize data, and will also know something about when to normalize data, based on the probable consequences of a normalized design, and the probable consequences of a different design. The same goes for how far to carry normalization.

Your idea that 1NF data is difficult to create and difficult to deal with is one that has eluded me for as long as I've been reading what you write in here. I'm wondering why I never ran into such difficulties when I built databases. It seemed pretty straightforward to me. In other words, you seem to spending an enormous amount of energy addressing a problem that I see as either minor or non-existent. Received on Mon Apr 24 2006 - 23:38:33 CEST