Re: cdt glossary 0.1.1 [MV]

dawn wrote:
...
> Similarly, MV experts have as much agreement among themselves as RM
> experts have ;-) but seem more civil about their disagreements (which
> is odd, given the different cultures historically).
> ...

That is an idiotic generalization. The fact is that there are very few RM experts but a lot of people who claim to be. When I read what those say, it is usually about something that isn't part of the RM. I guess they want to make a small subject bigger to enhance their own importance.

I'm convinced the RM was intended as a very narrow endeavour, even though I can't prove it. But I can observe that in the late 1960's, Codd was among several hundreds of movers and shakers in the DB world (this was at a time when IBM called it a good year if they sold several hundred mainframes and the mini-makers like DEC might sell tens of thousands but most of those had very little disk capacity, if any, and while there were a handful of brilliant academics interested in the db field, many universities didn't even offer a basic CS degree.) Codd would have known about other products besides IBM's but it is a known fact that he was inundated with internal bumpf about those. I suspect he chose a small enough scope that he felt was possible to do something about but just big enough to be able to counter the hierarchical thinking of those days. I think history has shown this decision of his to be just as important as his RM. Compare with http/html where the inventor had the luxury of picking the smallest possible solution to the smallest possible problem and got away with it because there was virtually no competition. Codd overcame the bigger obstacle.

p Received on Fri Apr 20 2007 - 01:22:26 CEST