Re: Nulls, integrity, the closed world assumption and events

JOG wrote:
> dawn wrote:
> > I think we need to come up with some
> > better understanding of and appreciation for a "wiki" or "web" data
> > model, one that pre-dates the RM. Because it has been around for many
> > years, there should be some good emperical data regarding the use of
> > this model compared to the RM, but I have not seen it.
>
> This statement made me feel physically nauseous for the poor people I
> know who have worked tirelessly and fruitlessly on graph data models.

I know there have been some recently, particularly related to the Semantic Web (and reading further, I see you reference that), who might not be too happy with the fruits of their labors. I have not been a fan of the Semantic Web, but figured it was trying to solve problems that I was not. I'm talking about the use of a similar model (di-graph of trees) for "structured data" not something that has been deemed "semi-structured."

> There is now an immense understanding of the 'web data model' and I
> know numerous people in both business and academia who feel they have
> completely and utterly wasted a decade of their life generating it in
> the name of the Semantic Web (at which /millions/ have been thrown by
> Hewlett Packard alone).

Yes, a shame, and other than a few books, not where I would put my dollars either. I'm sure there have been gains on the document "side of the house" as well as set-backs, but, again, I'm focussed on rather standard data processing (although everyone thinks their industry or apps to be non-standard in some ways).

> Perhaps it is not solely your fault that you are unaware that the Web
> data model has proven to be a complete and utter failure

I'm aware that the research and work with "semi-structured" data with OWL, RDF, etc. has not exactly born much fruit. So, I am not talking about the actual web, but the abstracted data model, a di-graph of trees. I don't know if you are referring to such attempted standards as RDF. I haven't been reading about this lately, so I don't even know if RDF is dead, but I figured it was when RSS diverged from it. I suspect you are referring to other research, but, in any case, people have been using the di-graph with trees on nodes model (by whatever name) for real data processing for decades while the semantic web is only the last decade or so and does not quite address the same "problem space."

>- the politics
> of funding requires not publishing results that destroy all of your job
> security or future income streams, so people's /abject/ disillusionment
> is substantially unreflected in publications.

I very much understand this, as I do know a bit about this--enough to resist any attempts to fund my own research at all, desiring to be completely free from any external pressures (and, therefore, just engaging in such efforts on the side, instead of picking up knitting at my age).

> Nonetheless the
> theoretical discussion of its insufficiency should have been a good
> place to start.

Perhaps there are some papers related to the Semantic Web that are also appropriate to structured data that would help me understand just what has been proven about its insufficiency. In my blog, I showed how the RM was not necessary in
http://www.tincat-group.com/mewsings/2006/01/naked-model.html nor sufficient in
http://www.tincat-group.com/mewsings/2006/02/dont-suffer-impedance.html for software development. If there is anything written with a similar audience in mind (me, for example) that might explain why the model that I and others have been using (di-graph with trees on nodes) is significantly impaired for developing data-based software, I would be happy to read it.

Some of the pieces I have picked up here are the concern about query language bias, constraints specified to the DBMS as they are in SQL-DBMS's and the fact that PICK (like MUMPS) "gives the developer enough rope to hang themselves", use of non-declarative languages for constraint-handling, ambiguity of NULL when used with 2VL, ... None of these is a show-stopper, but there is some weight to the aggregate, and I do wish to have an understanding of both the pros and cons of various models.

Thanks. --dawn Received on Mon Jan 22 2007 - 03:41:20 CET