Re: Object-relational impedence

Roy Hann wrote:

> "Thomas Gagne" <tgagne_at_wide-open-west.com> wrote in message 
> news:7vqdnf21dLOnrVHanZ2dnUVZ_tuonZ2d_at_wideopenwest.com...
> 

That is a remarkably uninformed and ill-conceived sentence. It's rather like comparing boats and cars saying boats have hulls and cars are pretty. Regardless of truth, the comparison is pointless on its face.

One can represent any graph on two-dimensional media just as one can represent any relation on two-dimensional media. In fact, since a graph is merely a set of vertices and a set of directed edges and since one can easily represent vertices and directed edges as tuples, one can easily represent any graph using relations.

The Great Debate was had about 3 decades ago and graphs lost. Nothing has happened in the meantime to improve the outcome in the favour of graphs.

> RDBs are not two-dimensional, they are n-dimensional.  You are confusing the 
> picture of the thing with the thing.  I have a three dimensional kitchen 
> table.  I have an RDB table with three columns (dimensions) called length, 
> width and height that describes it.
> 
> 

What moron would want to make an RDB function as graphs in the first place? We have known for 3 decades that graphs, themselves, result in disappointing performance and too much mapping. After all, every time one adds a new structural element, the design choices increase geometrically with no logical justification for choosing among them.

This leads people to discard logical independence and invent physical reasons. The arbitrary design choices then lead to query bias that effectively makes large numbers of useful queries prohibitively expensive to write or to execute.

>>infrastructure, and too much language/paradigm-specific layers. In
>>short, way more code, way more maintenance, and way more job-security
>>for consultants, pundits, and tool providers.

> 
> I completely, 100% agree with that.  Code is evil.
> 
> Roy