Re: Mixing OO and DB
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:22:50 +0100
Message-ID: <v9sr9x8zap4b.8u6w3exejh08.dlg_at_40tude.net>
On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:38:41 +0100, mAsterdam wrote:
>> mAsterdam wrote: >>> Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: >>>> mAsterdam wrote: >>>>> Leslie Sanford wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Newsgroups: comp.object, comp.databases.theory >>>>>> I cringe every time I see a thread crossposted to these two groups. >>>>>> Good seldomn comes of it. >>>>> Do you have an explanation for that? >>>>> >>>>> Any ideas except 'the other guys are so stupid'? >>>> Market. Both OO and RDB are technologies with market products on sale. >>> Let's see if I can play with this using a metaphore. >>> >>> So are, say, ships and engines (technologies with market products on >>> sale). Both have their own laws. >>> Designing a motorized boat requires a shared understanding >>> of some of them. There is a market for sailing boats, >>> there is a market for engines wchich can be used in other things than >>> ships. In this thread, we /are/ mixing. Shouldn't there be a market >>> for motorizing boats and for engines fit for use on a ship? >> >> Ship and engine design are a proper engineering activities, while "software >> engineering" is not. Exaggerating a lot, we could compare it with religions >> and their "market products." Certainly a god is more worth if there is no >> any other...
>
> Metaphores only go so far. However, if you are extending it to
> religion just to illustrate the depth of the divide and the
> presence of the unknown, there is no need to do so.
> No shipwright knows all there is to know about ships,
> even about the ones of his own design.
> Engines have come a long enough way to have that as well.
So software engineering will do in the future. But presently there is no hundreds of years behind us. Consider, year 2000 B.C., a discussion about merits of whips against clubs for slave management. Surely slave management is fundamental for ships propelling, slaves have to be arranged in rows, etc...
>> All technical disciplines are based on natural sciences which provide a >> common ground for an interdisciplinary communication. This is not the case >> for either OO or RDB. They not only compete in selling, often snake oil, >> which questions whether they indeed are different disciplines, as your >> example suggests.
>
> It does indeed. If studying OO and DB are not
> different disciplines then their whole ground is common.
> What is left is dogma, groupthink and language.
> Does that explain the whole of the divide?
Yes, because the common ground is not understood and not even articulated.
When in a subthread Patrick May wrote about the goals of software design (quality), you disagreed. In your metaphor, he just said that a ship should float. You replied that it is not about ships. How can we discuss means when there is no agreement on what we are going to achieve?
Anybody on my side of the fence would say that DB is merely a software. But that is a consequence of an even more heretical concept that data is a fiction, a product of some language. (So any distinction between DB and DBMS is also fictional.) This is what divides us, not engineering techniques.
> Table manners can be quite offensive.
-- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.deReceived on Sun Feb 10 2008 - 10:22:50 CET