Re: A database theory resource - ideas

On 2007-03-17, Walt <wamitty_at_verizon.net> wrote:

>
> My history with database matters is very different from Marshall's. I was
> fortunate enough to have a mentor on the subject of databases, back in the
> early 1980s. He was an instructor in the area of COBOL and DBMS, and I was
> an instructor in the area of assembler and OS internals. We were each good
> in our own area, and coached the other.

OK. My experience is similar to Marshall's. I started my IT career by being left in charge of a part-completed ERP system while I was working as an electronics salesman. To get answers for my customers I rolled my sleeves up and wrote 4GL scripts, eventually inventing the data warehouse because nobody told me it was supposed to be difficult.

Since then I've continued to torture DBMS systems into telling me what they know. Later on I handled tech support for a CASE tool for the SSADM methodology and picked up a reasonable amount of database theory to be able to do that.

>
> I had taken a brief look at CODASYL DBMS and decided that there was too much
> complexity for the amount of power offered. Then he showed me an article
> from a trade zine about "How to use data normalization when designing
> indexed files." This was my intro to 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF. Very
> non-theoretical. And it just so happened that, at that time, I was using
> indexed files.

My introduction to normalisation was sitting around with a bunch of developers who wanted to build a tool to do it automatically stage-by-stage. Then we found that none of our customers wanted that because they all did it in their heads, and they didn't write anything down until they thought it was in 3NF.

> Now I'm about to eat my earlier words concerning the value of examples. (I
> think I was overreacting to the phrase "for dummies"). I think that well
> chosen examples are an excellent way to make the theory more concrete. And
> I think a concrete grounding in the value of the fundamentals (the benefits
> of doing things a certain way) has to precede a thorough understanding of
> the theory itself.

I spent a while as a trainer studying learning theory. Different people have different ways to approach learning. Most people know what worked for them and cam mistakenly believe that the same approach works for everyone. A universal learning resource has to take different learning styles into account.

Personally I'm quite happy with the "Dummies" approach. Firstly I recognise the name as a marketing gimmick and I'm not tempted to take it literally. Secondly, I've had to learn new subjects in a hurry and the Dummies books are pretty useful for figuring out what not to do if you want to keep your job beyond day one. Lastly, I've seen some very smart people do some very dumb things when they are outside their area of expertise. All of us are dummies sometimes.

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