Newsgroup Signal to Noise Ratio

One of my habits that I've changed somewhat is how I respond to neophyte database designers. If I respond at all, I send them to the U Texas website on data modeling & DB design. Some of them appreciate that outline, and then ask for the best book on the subject. I don't respond to that request, but it's mainly because my own reading of introductory material on databases is way out of date, I'm too lazy to bring it up to date, and I'm confident that other responders will provide a good reading list.

With regard to requests for help that are "over the top", I'll point you to this:

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=499980&start=0&tstart=0

This thing has been making the rounds. I'm convinced that it was intended as satire right from the start. It's a little depressing that so many people respond to it as if it were serious. I might have done the same thing a couple of years ago.

As far as "snake oil salesmen" go, I think there's something on a consensus in this newsgroup to deprive them of the energy they need to thrive. As for me, I enjoy the challenge to some of my fondest assumptions, but I don't enjoy going over the same territory again and again. So I'm more likely to let a novel idea that's probably unsound pass without comment.

As far as my own contributions go, I have precious little to offer at the theoretical level. It's all I can do to keep up with the discussions that Vadim contributes to, and it calls my attention to a vast area of theory that I know nothing about. My experience at designing databases, and more importantly rescuing databases that were in trouble, has some tangential value in the discussion of theory. But it remains tangential.

As I've said a while ago, if there were a "comp.databases.design" newsgroup, I'd probably migrate there. But I don't have the passion about such a thing to go about creating a new ng. Received on Tue May 01 2007 - 14:49:40 CEST