Re: Generalised approach to storing address details

Rob wrote:
> Cimode wrote:
> >
> > RM was created on the first place in the perspective of getting away
> > from the sterile hierarchic paradigm of computing...A way for breaking
> > the vicious circle in which lots of idiots try to get us back...
> >
>
> Entirely false and self-serving.
>
> First, RM was created in "reaction to the escalating costs required for
> deploying and maintaining complex systems". It had nothing to do with
> 'getting away from the sterile hierarchic paradigm of computing' and
> everything to do with providing a logical, declarative data model which
> would allow "programmers to describe the information they wanted and
> to leave the details of optimization and access to the database
> management system". [Double quoted text from:
>
> http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=299
>
> ]
>
> Second, 'sterile hierarchic paradigm of computing' is your opinion,
> nothing more. In point of fact, everything the average computer
> enduser/knowledgeworker uses (besides spreadsheets and SQL responses)
> is hierarchical: menus, org charts, table of contents, the Web.
> Sterile for you perhaps, but effective for the rest of us.

With all due respect, this is absolute nonsense and I vociferously disagree. It has been proven in numerous research studies that menu's use is deletrious if nesting goes above two levels. Table of contents are just simulating their paper equivalents - Hypertext has shown that this is inferior to other methodologies. The Web is absolutely not hierarchical /by definition/. File systems are the only real vestige of hierarchy left and are a well known and are rapidly changing to add none hierarchical features - tagging, meta-data, search and database driven structuring.

Imprisoning users in Hierarchy and the simulation of paper in a more powerful media, are anchors round the neck of IT users that you would do well to not perpetuate.

>
> If one objective of database experts is to broaden access to
> databases and use of relational technologies, perhaps the experts
> should show some concern for making such access and use available
> through interfaces (like hierarchical) that are more intuitive
> to non-experts instead of branding as 'idiots' anyone who cannot
> master modeling with relations, formulating queries in SQL or
> making sense of unnormalized SQL extensions (i.e., query
> responses).

Very little in the world is hierarchical. Even the oft cited hierarchy of biological taxonomy, breaks down at several points. As a contemporary example witness the collapse of Yahoo style directory hierarchies for web browsing, which rapidly became unsupportable and unusable, and the total domination of pure search in the form of google.

>
> Your vitriol sounds to me like job security: As long as the gcd
> (greatest common denominator) interface to RDBs and RDBMEs (engines,
> servers) remains SQL, you will be in great demand. Considering that
> a small business could deploy a competent RDBMS for less than $5K
> and the annual cost of one SQL expert is upwards of $250K, one has
> to regard the SQL Meta Meta Model as the most significant obstacle
> to the widespread DIRECT use of database technology by those who
> are not SQL experts.
>
> Rob
Received on Wed Dec 13 2006 - 11:39:05 CET