Re: Object-relational impedence

"topmind" <topmind_at_technologist.com> wrote in message news:783693cf-0424-4d3c-a16b-30fef9365c04_at_u10g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
>
>
> Brian Selzer wrote:
>> "S Perryman" <q_at_q.com> wrote in message news:frot80$5k7$1_at_aioe.org...
>> > Eric wrote:
>> >
>> >> On 2008-03-17, S Perryman <q_at_q.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > SP>For the real-world systems involving "variant records" that I have
>> > worked
>> > SP>on (100+ different record types, 100+ different property types) your
>> > table
>> > SP>is merely a global variable from hell (as evidenced by the several
>> > telecoms
>> > SP>systems that used the same approach in the 1990s and ended up being
>> > a
>> > SP>lifetime rewrite and rebuild job whenever types and properties came
>> > and
>> > SP>went) .
>> >
>> > E>If you build a system around something like that, you are crazy.
>> >
>> >>>How *dare* you criticise the mighty "table-oriented" programming !!??
>> >>>:-)
>> >
>> >> I don't know what table-oriented programming is, unless you want to
>> >> bring up something like Filetab. Any tool can be misused, and this
>> >> case
>> >> certainly sound like extreme misuse (of just about anything).
>> >
>> >
>> > E>If it is a given that you have to deal with, all you can do is treat
>> > it
>> > as
>> > E>messages and parse them to put the information you need into sensible
>> > E>structures. This is probably true for a much smaller number of
>> > variants.
>> >
>> >>>The system was just a nightmare (C, Oracle etc) .
>> >>>A relational *data* base was completely the wrong impl technology for
>> >>>the
>> >>>problem.
>> >
>> >>>And the developers could not be blamed for anything that they wrote (I
>> >>>saw
>> >>>the code) .
>> >
>> >> That just means that their idea of how to program with an RDBMS was
>> >> similar to yours. Maybe you and they are both wrong.
>> >
>> > Maybe they and I were in fact right.
>> >
>> >
>> >>>Their DB schema was normalised etc as expected (each type had a set of
>> >>>attribute properties, those properties could be sets, sequences,
>> >>>record
>> >>>types, collections of refs to instances of other types etc) .
>> >
>> >> Sounds like an EntityAttributeValue system - we _know_ that they are
>> >> silly.
>> >
>> > Feel free to search on "OSI network management" , "CMIS" etc.
>> > That will tell you sufficient about the subject domain for which they
>> > were using an RDBMS as an impl technology.
>> >
>> >
>> >>>The performance of the system (meta-type checking, property id
>> >>>retrieval,
>> >>>retrieving messages from real equipment and putting property info into
>> >>>the
>> >>>correct tables etc) was just dire as a result of the operational
>> >>>sequence.
>> >
>> >>>And this was for a system that only represented a manager-side view of
>> >>>a network of a few hundred equipment instances. If this approach had
>> >>>been
>> >>>used for subsequent systems I worked on (the equipment-side view, for
>> >>>a
>> >>>network of *500,000* telephone lines) , the developers would have been
>> >>>shot.
>> >
>> >>>It was such dis-crediting of RDBMS at the time (1991-1995) that led to
>> >>>the
>> >>>rise of OODBMS in the telecoms arena (at that time OODBs only had a
>> >>>foot-
>> >>>hold in the CAD/CAM arena) . The performance difference was orders of
>> >>>magnitudes.
>> >
>> >> Somebody designed and built a bad system, so you blame the tools they
>> >> used. Oh, no, hang on, you just blamed one of the tools. All the other
>> >> tools and platforms, all the designers and programmers, they were
>> >> perfect.
>> >
>> > What are you on about ?? What *other* "tools and platforms" ??
>> >
>> > Their system used an RDBMS. And it performed poorly.
>> > The same systems subsequently built on the same platforms (HW, OS,
>> > comms,
>> > prog langs etc) , but using an OODBMS instead, performed orders of
>> > magnitude better.
>> >
>> > That's life.
>> >
>>
>> Funny, but this "orders of magnitude better" claim sounds like something
>> a
>> shifty politician like Barack Hussein Obama would say. He can supposedly
>> turn a whole lot of nothing into something that makes women swoon.
>> Politicians--especially Dimocrats, but not exclusively--play on the
>> ignorance of their constituents by telling only part of the story.
>
> Uh uh politics!
>
> We need somebody like G.W.Bush to set everything right and give us the
> full story {cough} {cough} {cough}.
>

I used to like Bush. I voted for him twice. But I'm disappointed. We've got millions of squatters here with many more pouring in every day. These criminals drain local economies. More police are required to deal with the increased crime; more space is required in prisons to house their more desparate and violent elements. They also crowd emergency rooms, thus driving up the price of health care and reducing availability to law-abiding citizens. The fence that should have already been built has barely even begun to be constructed. It's a bleeding wound. You would think that Bush would at least put a band-aid on it--especially since Congress actually appropriated monies for it.

>> Take for
>> example the hysteria over global warming. The disasters and horrors that
>> are predicted by the left-wing lunatics can only happen if the globe
>> warms
>> by at least 5 or 6 degrees, but in the last 100 years, the globe has only
>> warmed by about half a degree.
>
> Yeah, let the kids worry about floods and drought; we'll be dead by
> then. Typical repub: dump problem on the next generation (debt.,
> climate, good-will, etc.)
>

At the rate of global temperature increase, it won't be my kids, or my kids' kids, but fifty generations down the road. Count 'em, fifty! By then all of the fossil fuels will have long since been exhausted, and the climate will have adjusted itself accordingly.

Just a little tidbit of information that you appear not to know: the Dims controlled the Senate for nearly half of Bush's Presidency. Remember Jumpin' Jim Jeffords? Even in those years that they didn't, they still had enough power to block any legislation that they didn't like. News-flash: you need 60 votes in the Senate to limit debate--that is, to prevent a filibuster. That means that you need 60 votes to get anything done. That's why it seems that nothing ever gets done (and that's probably a good thing).

Also, dumping problems on the next generation is somthing that both parties are guilty of. We're facing a economic disaster in about ten years because Social Security is broke. In order to satisfy those entitlements, there will have to be HUGE tax increases, which will in turn cause the economy to spiral into oblivion. In fact, this is the most critical issue facing the nation today, because if we act today, we might be able to prevent disaster, but if we wait another four or eight years, it will be too late.

>> I once altered a system that was designed to
>> process only 14,000 transactions per hour so that it could process ten
>> times
>> that in the same time. That's orders of magnitude improvement, but I
>> didn't
>> change the DBMS, I rewrote some poorly written procs. I once altered a
>> system that had a job that was taking over 25 hours to process so that it
>> took less than 30 minutes by simply adjusting the way the hardware was
>> used.
>> Again the orders of magnitude improvement was not due to changing the
>> DBMS,
>> it was making the best use of the available hardware. It is also often
>> the
>> case that you can obtain orders of magnitude performance improvement by
>> simply adding an index--at least for queries that can take advantage of
>> the
>> index. Your claims of orders of magnitude better performance, therefore,
>> are much like the claims of a used car salesman, or of a sleazy lawyer.
>> Suspect.
>>
>> >
>> >> Does that sound even remotely sensible?
>> >
>> > 1. Sounds like the rantings of someone who cannot face the possibility
>> > that their pet thing was a problem.
>> >
>> > 2. So no, not sensible.
>> >
>> >
>> >> I think they misused the tool.
>> >
>> > The reality being that they did not.
>> >
>> >
>> >> You may say they used the wrong tool - for this particular job.
>> >
>> > They were constrained to use the wrong tool for the job.
>> > By their employer, and by no alternative commercial technology (OODBs
>> > etc) available at that time.
>> >
>> >
>> >> Even if they did, that does not make it a bad tool.
>> >
>> > No one said it was.
>> >
>> >
>> >>>What is required to get both, and the reasons why we haven't to date,
>> >>>have been (for a few here anyway) discussed as per the thread subject
>> >>>line.
>> >
>> >> It seems that a lot of the "discussions" have been people talking past
>> >> one another because they have different frames of reference.
>> >
>> > Probably.
>> > Fortunately there have been sufficient people to cogently debate with
>> > me.
>> >
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Steven Perryman
Received on Wed Mar 19 2008 - 07:50:57 CET