Re: A database theory resource - ideas

On Mar 17, 8:50 pm, "Bruce C. Baker" <bcbake..._at_cox.net> wrote:
> "Tony D" <tonyisyour..._at_netscape.net> wrote in message
>
> news:1174173103.063176.163970_at_o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On Mar 17, 2:24 am, "Bruce C. Baker" <bcbake..._at_cox.net> wrote:
>
> >> Dawn, perhaps you could follow JOG's lead and set up your own MV theory
> >> resourece?
>
> >> I'm only half-kidding ...
>
> > She has. I'll let Dawn promote it for herself. Suffice to say some of
> > the comments on her site put her contributions here in fairly sharp
> > relief.
>
> Are you referring to this:
>
> http://www.tincat-group.com/index.html?
>
> Looks more like a blog and some occasional pieces than an actual collection
> of MV resources.

Yes, I have largely my own writings on my site and I have not written very much. I do hope you enjoy my blogs, else the MV trilogy might be of interest. I did a lot of research for the MV family tree poster.

I have interviewed many who have been in the MultiValue industry for more than a quarter of a century, and I have several of the published books on Pick in my library, right there next to Codd and Date. But this is a group that has been heads down solving business problems with their tools (when not coked up as I'll grant that the stories in the history of Pick have included plenty of drugs, drinking, and debauchery in addition to technology). There seems to be little interest in the ivory tower.

Henry Eggers might be the closest the MV world has come to having someone who has reflected over the years on theory related to Pick or on Pick vs Relational. He says "Pick gives you enough rope to hang yourself." This is a virtue in the PIck world. He does not do email,  unfortunately, and I'm lousy at snail mail, so I have not had as many conversations with him as I would like. If anyone in the LA (Newport Beach) area is interested in talking to him, I do have contact information.

Most old timers are aware of Dick Pick's disparaging remarks about SQL and many agree with him ("SQL is brain-dead" is one I was told). Many have moved on to working with SQL DBMS's, however, picking up whatever tools are appropriate for the work their company is doing. Those I have talked to who know both do not tend to care about theory either. In general, they like the tools available with SQL-based DBMS's but the ease of development they had in the MV world. Few folks I have talked to prefer 1NF (the form formerly known as 1NF) or 3VL.

When it comes to resources, the ACM portal has as many reputable sources as anywhere that are related to MV, even if not specific to it, with topics about functional databases (Pick BASIC is procedural, but Pick files are handily modeled as functions, and some of what is talked about as "functional databases" is relevent), di-graphs and other graph theory-related models for data, objects, NF2 (not sure if such papers are in that portal) etc.

If we look at the front lines of modern software development and also at the pre-relational models that have survived through the relational years, there is a lot of production work being done today using not- -relational data models, persisting data in something other than the form formerly known as 1NF, for starters and using 2VL rather than 3VL, thank goodness. But we also see set-based logic and less iteration than was used in the 70's. So, the RM has had an impact even if the ability to model data in multiple ways is more likely to be the wave of the future (tossing aside the Information Principle).

It was very surprising to me to find out that Intersystems, with their object implementation in addition to their MUMPs BASIC, SQL and other interfaces, a company that advertises in Java & .NET cutting edge s/w dev circles, was writing MV for Cache. Yes, they just wrote a new Pick implementation for Cache data, can you believe it? You can write data as objects and query it as Pick or SQL, for example. [If anyone else is headed to their DEVCON, let me know.] I'm guessing that these folks, too, are focussed on solving the problems of businesses much more than on related theory, but I'll see if I can find any mumps theorists at the conference at the end of the month.

At this point, I still have theory that doesn't translate into best practices from what I can tell (relational) and data models and tools for "agile" or just plain fast and maintainable software development that doesn't have an adequate theory backing it (pick, mumps, object). I'm selecting tools for a real project that I am funding and I'm gonna have to go with the tools that yield the best value in software development, whether backed by impressive theory or not. -- dawn

P.S. Thanks, Bob, I think I have misspelled "empirical" many times, but I'll try to remember it now. Received on Sun Mar 18 2007 - 04:03:32 CET