Re: Objects and Relations

On Feb 6, 12:13 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> JOG wrote:
> > On Feb 6, 1:01 am, "David BL" <davi..._at_iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
> >>On Feb 6, 5:01 am, Kenneth Downs <knode.wants.t..._at_see.sigblock>
> >>wrote:
>
> >>>Walt wrote:
>
> >>>>>>All databases, RM or otherwise, are about record-keeping. That is
> >>>>>>their purpose.
>
> >>>>>I presume by "keeping" you mean persistence. By "record" do you mean
> >>>>>a tuple of a relation? If so I don't agree. An RDB is about "record
> >>>>>keeping", but not an OODB (used appropriately).
>
> >>>>I don't think the term "record-keeping" is closely related to the term
> >>>>"record" as you assert above.
> >>>>Record-keeping predates electronic computers.
>
> >>>Yup. I abandoned this thread as soon as I saw that it was never going to be
> >>>about down-to-earth ideas.
>
> >>Down to earth as in "muddy"? :)
>
> >>Could you please define in more detail what "record keeping" means?
> >>For example does it include the recording of large amounts of text?
>
> >>I think your characterisation of database versus programs (record
> >>keepers versus taxis) has to do with persistent state versus transient
> >>state, or perhaps disk versus memory+CPU rather than with the
> >>distinction between relational (state) and OO (state).
>
> >>I note that systems based on RM provide the means to manipulate the RM
> >>state. So it doesn't seem quite right to say that RM is about
> >>passive state and OO is about active state. Remember as well that
> >>most objects don't host their own threads and therefore are passive
> >>(meaning they only do things when a thread calls their methods).
>
> >>I claim that the distinction between OO and relational has a lot to do
> >>with the question of whether entities are inside or outside the
> >>abstract computational machine, noting that 1) secondary storage is
> >>part of the machine so persistence has nothing to do with it, and 2)
> >>at the system level both relational and OO based approaches are
> >>"active" so that has nothing to do with it either.
>
> > Then it seems that what you are essentially saying here is - OO
> > functions at the conceptual layer, and RM at the logical layer. This
> > is not really breaking news...
>
> Frankly, you give him too much credit. Stop trying so hard to make sense
> of what he writes and let his nonsense stand on its own

I'm not surprised that Bob says I write nonsense. Although he is intelligent, his extreme arrogance leads him to be dismissive and close minded. He scans a small subset of the posts and uses guesswork to infer what is actually being said. This was exposed for all to see in a recent thread. Received on Tue Feb 06 2007 - 07:27:09 CET