Re: RM's Canonical database

Dan wrote:
> Frans Bouma wrote:
> > Bob Badour wrote:
> >
> > > Ron Jeffries wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Sat, 01 Jul 2006 11:27:17 +0200, mAsterdam
> > > > <mAsterdam_at_vrijdag.org> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Robert Martin wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > ... business rules don't belong in the database.
> > > > >
> > > > > What, in your opinion, does belong in the database?
> > > >
> > > > Uh ... data?
> > >
> > > 'Data' is information represented suitably for machine
> > > processing. In what way are business rules not information or not
> > > represented suitably for machine processing?
> >
> > Bob, are you now suggesting that you don't know the difference
> > between data and information? No don't bother looking up a Dijkstra
> > quote on that.
> >
> > FB
> This is certainly a provocative question. Are you sure there is a
> definitive answer?

        Dan, it was a sarcastic question, rethoric if you will. Of course I don't doubt bobby knows what the difference is, and I also don't care if he knows the difference or not. He just made a formulation error in his text which could suggest he doesn't know the difference, and I gave him a silly reply like he also tends to do with whatever comes out of c.o.

> This is big-time business intelligence vendor software buzzword stuff.

         You mean the difference between data and information? I think not, the difference between data and information is the core of what software engineering is all about.

        If you mean: business logic vs. business rules vs. validation code vs. domain specific logic vs... vs. ... then there's a lot of crap cooked up by marketing and sales departments indeed, and we should all stay away far from what marketing and salesbozo's cook up. The thing is however that a developer of an application will run into 'rules' or whatever you want to call them, which have to be implemented, somewhere.

        The thing is that there's not a uniform name for these 'rules' or whatever you want to call them, only within niches (DDD niche, SOA niche etc.)

> Please, enlighten us on the difference between data and information.

        I think we all can handle a dictionairy, don't you? :). For the dictionary impaired:
Data: 1
information: 1, customerid of your first customer.

        When someone says "data IS information blabla", then that's not correct. You CREATE information from data. Data by itself isn't information. If you say it IS information, you already made the conversion, distillation if you will, from data to information.

> What is the purpose of data if it doesn't give us some mechanism of
> interpretation as information?

        that suggests the mechanism is part of the data. I don't think that's the case. For example OLAP queries aren't part of the data you also use for your application.

> Doesn't better data give us better
> information? Are prepositions data or information? Is there any such
> thing as information without data?

        No data can also be information ;).

> Where does the line lie (the
> clearly delineated big thick black one) that distinguishes data from
> information? In other words, at what level of abstraction and
> interface is data suddenly considered information, or is it
> contextually dependent on the human receptor?

        I don't think its related to humans. I see information as the value obtained by interpretation of input of 0 or more units of data. That interpretation can also be done my a program or a machine.

> Why is "information
> theory" in the classical computer science sense natural language
> semantics ignorant (atrophy using binary encondings, etc.) yet still
> called "information" theory? Why have "information rich" disciplines
> such as artifcial intelligence been such colossal failures, while
> "data rich" disciplines enjoy a measure of success?

        well, because data-rich is easy to sell to big corp's with the need to fill big databases and AI is still 'vague stuff' for a lot of people ?

        Related to this, it's amazing that in the couple of c.o-c.d.t. shared threads NO-ONE from the c.d.t. newsgroup has brought up OLAP, something which is a blind spot when it comes to OOP, yet a fast growing field where databases are more and more used for.

> Business rules as logic can be represented symbolically, just as a
> natural language would do less efficiently, and then have
> manipulations of them mechanized by a computing system, just as facts
> as true prepositions are. Why would the distinction between
> information and data come into play here?

        because the logic which forms your app makes it possible to harvest information from the cold, static, boring data and it's therefore very important to get that right.

                FB

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lead developer of LLBLGen Pro, the productive O/R mapper for .NET
LLBLGen Pro website: http://www.llblgen.com
My .NET blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma
Microsoft MVP (C#) 
------------------------------------------------------------------------