Re: Lucid statement of the MV vs RM position?

dawn wrote:
> Jan Hidders wrote:
> > dawn wrote:
> > >
> > > Well, there's more than 30 years of production apps out there running
> > > flavors of MUMPS, PICK, and others from which the jury could gather
> > > data.
> >
> > They already have done so, and they already know why they work
> > efficiently under certain circumstances, and under which circumstances
> > they have problems.
>
> I've tried to find those "they" people to see what they have found out.
> Can you point to one study out there that compares Pick with SQL-based
> products? What is out there that compares any non-SQL (or SQL as a
> second language) databases with SQL DBMS's without using SQL against
> the non-SQL database? I'm apparently doing a lousy job of searching.
> I'm not looking for theory on this one, but actual studies of real
> software solutions. It does seem like there would be such, but I'm not
> finding 'em.

I don't know any, nor do I expect something like that to exist. Such comparisons are difficult because of several reasons. The claims of the RM are mainly wrt. the functioning of an IT department as a whole within a certain type of context. That is hard to recreate in an experiment.

> > > [...] Unfortunately, there are no industry performance measures
> > > of which I am aware that are not designed strictly for SQL-DBMS's (or
> > > do you know of some?)
> >
> > Simply translate they SQL queries to queries in the ad-hoc query
> > language of your favorite system. Presuming, of course, that this
> > ad-hoc query language is powerful enough.
>
> You would need to implement solutions to the same business problems.

Yes, if you are only interested in execution performance. But, again, for a meaningful comparison between the two technolgies that approach could be, depending on your definition of "business problem", too myopic.

> > Any extra required
> > programming would of course make the comparison meaningless.
>
> Not to an end-user, but, yes.

Not necessarily. Indirectly this sometimes also matters to the end-user.

• Jan Hidders