Re: Is it possible to use a database though any high-level API?

From: David Cressey <cressey73_at_verizon.net>
Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 09:49:04 GMT
Message-ID: <kei_h.5978$YW4.2531@trndny06>

"Marshall" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote in message news:1178164384.773750.172130_at_y5g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
> On May 2, 1:32 pm, "David Cressey" <cresse..._at_verizon.net> wrote:
> > "Marshall" <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On May 2, 12:06 pm, Volker Hetzer <firstname.lastn..._at_ieee.org>
wrote:
> > > >
> > > > The OO databases I had seen only had programming
> > > > language interfaces like for C++ or Java. No query language, no
> > > > console or other ad-hoc query tool.
> >
> > > WHAT were they thinking?!
> >
> > They were thinking like programmers. Those of us who see the value in
> > data-centric data management always have to be on the lookout for "the
> > revenge of the nerds".
> >
> > This is only one case among hundreds like it. There is no sign of
universal
> > enlightenment in the forseeable future.

>

> Nicely put.

>

> Let me take it one step further, though: there's an aspect of hubris
> about it. These are people who are certainly aware of the fact that
> data management has been studied for decades, and yet they
> have consciously decided that it is completely unnecessary to
> try to learn what that field has come up with before starting their
> own efforts. And in fact they have done so with the certainty that
> their efforts are going to yield superior results, despite their own
> ignorance. Indeed, I have heard people argue sincerely and with
> a straight face that their ignorance is a success factor!

>

> It is this hubris, this faith in ignorance, this anti-intellectualism,
> that I despise.

>

I'm slightly guilty of this kind of thinking myself, or at least of aiding and abetting it.

It comes from an addiction to "thinking outside of the box". While thinking outside of the box occasionally yields novel, unexpected, and spectacularly successful results, we tend to forget that, 90% of the time, the solution is to be found inside of the box.

But I think that management of any kind, including data management, is a particularly boring kind of intellectual effort, seen through the eyes of the naive. And we are all born naive, by definition!

Programming, as an intellectual effort, is particularly attractive to those who place no value in the past. In what other discipline do we teach neophytes to write before they have properly learned how to read? The hubris you speak of is built in to the students. But we encourage it! Received on Thu May 03 2007 - 04:49:04 CDT