Re: Newbie question on table design.

"Frank Hamersley" <terabitemightbe_at_bigpond.com> wrote in message news:8jk_h.33197$M.16927_at_news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> David Cressey wrote:
> > "-CELKO-" <jcelko212_at_earthlink.net> wrote in message
> >>
> >> They are not called libraries; they are called "copy books" because
> >> that is exactly what they are -- text for cut and paste.
> >
> > I beg your pardon, but they *were* called "libraries" in TOPS-10/20
COBOL
> > circles. And they functioned like libraries.
>
> In CDC land we called 'em "Copy Decks" cos they were (originally) 80
> column punched card decks.
> I never thought of them as libraries per se as they were not object code
> - they were functional though :-)
>
> Cheers Frank.
>
>
I know practically nothing of CDC culture, but quite a bit about DEC culture, going way back. My impression of CDC culture, gleaned indirectly from what Niklaus Wirth had to say about the CDCmachines, is that CDC culture discovered interactive development later than DEC culture did. I'm just about certain that IBM culture discovered interactive development later than DEC culture did. This is somewhat related to the topic at hand.

I've got a lot more respect for Joe Celko than do some of the regulars in this newsgroup. But I think he has a big blind spot when it comes to recognizing parts of the history of computing that were beyond his field of view at the time. In other words, "if I never heard of it back in 1975, then nobody heard of it in 1975". It just ain't so. Not for me, not for you, and not for Joe.

The transition from data definitions being sprinkled throughout the source code (think "FORMAT" statements in early FORTRAN programs) to data definitions being neatly laid in the form of metadata stored in system tables, and those modeled according to a uniform industry standard, is one of those evolutions that was marked by a whole lot of little changes, rather than one blinding quantum leap.

And if Joe thinks that everyone who uses the term "record" is unfamiliar with active data dictionaries and data definition management, then all I can say is that Joe is profiling from ignorance.

Having said all this, I think Codd's 1970 paper has all the earmarks of a quantum leap, rather than an evolutionary step. I suppose I could have chosen the 1969 paper, but nobody ever heard of the 1969 paper (hee, hee). Received on Thu May 03 2007 - 15:51:58 CEST