Re: Sets and Lists, again

"dawn" <dawnwolthuis_at_gmail.com> wrote in message news:1148341342.580083.39780_at_y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

> For the problem domains I have worked with, nothing could be done with
> one that could not be done with the other data model. When a list is
> logically modeled as a set, more work is required, however. So for the
> typical business data processing application, the RM is simply a more
> primitive means of modeling a list. It is similar to working with
> assembler when one could use a higher level language for the average
> use. Do you still disagree with that assessment? --dawn
>

I've been perplexed for years about why you ran into so much trouble with First Normal Form, The Relational Data Model, SQL, and Oracle (or DB2, whatever), and keep on claiming that they never delivered the "bang for the buck" you expected.
I always thought that, if I kept reading long enough, it would become clear.

When you started your blog, I was one of those who thought your beginning was a good one. However, soon after you started you abandoned your original plan of laying out the RM and the MV side by side, and demonstrating the areas where MV seemed better to you. At about that time, I stopped reading the blog. I'm not about to invest the effort in learning the MV until I'm convinced that it's worth my while.

After reading and rereading the above, it's all becoming clear now. If you think of sets as just clumsy ways of expressing lists, then it's no wonder that you've had all sorts of trouble that I never had with 1NF, RDM, SQL, and various products. I would expect nothing else. Received on Tue May 23 2006 - 23:42:39 CEST