Re: Testing relational databases

From: paul c <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 00:17:56 GMT
Message-ID: <U0hsg.144428$Mn5.23089@pd7tw3no>

Bob Badour wrote:
> Phlip wrote:
>

>> Bob Badour wrote:
>>
>>>>> Or, as is too often the case, it will be entirely arbitrary--even 
>>>>> random.
>>
>>> I don't recall reviewing any books recently.
>>
>> So ... Scott Ambler's book won't lead to arbitrary and random database 
>> designs?

>
> Ambler is a self-aggrandizing ignorant. That has been demonstrated
> substantively and effectively. God only knows what following his
> nonsense might lead to, which is why I pointed out that nothing he
> writes deserves any further attention.
>
> Deciding at whim to alter the logical design of a database (or of
> anything else for that matter) is sure to lead to something arbitrary
> and random. Having observed such randomness more often than not, I
> conclude it is altogether too common.

I stopped after the first paragraph of the web page and concluded that he is either mentally from another planet or a charlatan. There are many of the latter from this planet. For me, that paragraph completely failed to qualify whatever he might possibly be talking about, substituting the intransitive to the transitive and so forth.

I note that he says 'often persists', rather than 'always persist'. If all a dbms did was 'always persist', there wouldn't be much to test. If all dbms's were SQL, there wouldn't be much point in testing even that little, since in SQL, UNION isn't identical to OR, even though it should be (as Mikito and his friend have demonstrated!). He even equates an object with a method. That's a lot of nonsense for one paragraph, maybe one of the big vendors will volunteer a contest to see who can exceed it. Those two terms are not ones I'm comfortable with but even I can see that the false-opposite camp sees their equality as contradictory.

If these people can mutate language at will, surely they can come up with a mutation that requires no testing at all.

I'm a bit slow (and never understood the mysticism of fishing even though father was a fanatical solitary fisherman) but I feel that I'm finally starting to understand the essence of trolling. SAI might be a special case of troll. This guy is obviously feeding on ignorance/mental laziness/fear of telling the boss that one is in over one's head. I feel competent to recognize those traits.

p Received on Sun Jul 09 2006 - 19:17:56 CDT