Re: Mixing OO and DB
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:52:00 +0100
Message-ID: <47af1cd5$0$85789$e4fe514c_at_news.xs4all.nl>
Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> mAsterdam wrote:
>> Dmitry A. Kazakov 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.
What matters here is: does the engineer know everythying there is to know about his product? The answer is no - wether the product is a ship, an engine, a database or a piece of software.
> Consider, year 2000 B.C., a discussion about
> merits of whips against clubs for slave management.
Yet another extension to the metaphore - you think it isn't rich enough?
> Surely slave management
> is fundamental for ships propelling, slaves have to be arranged in rows,
> etc...
In your extension, you appear to map your slaves to data. Slaves behave, objects do. Data doesn't.
>>> 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.
All ground is common. This, like Patrick May's stance, invalidates the OP's question.
> When in a subthread Patrick May wrote about the goals of software design
> (quality), you disagreed.
That is not what I disagreed with.
This is a serious misrepresentation.
You can read. Is it intentional?
> 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
Please describe the fence as seen from your side.
> 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.)
All models, all concepts are fictional, but we are
talking about shared fictions here, so that filosofical
insight does not help us here.
I see the same DB/DBMS conflation as Patrick made.
I asked Patrick, and I'm asking you:
Do you need that?
> This is what divides us, not engineering techniques.
>
>> Table manners can be quite offensive.
>
> from food's point of view...
You like rapid topic shifts?
-- What you see depends on where you stand.Received on Sun Feb 10 2008 - 16:52:00 CET