Re: Why is database integrity so impopular ?

Hello Eric,

On 5 oct, 20:30, eric.bouchardlefeb..._at_gmail.com wrote:

> It amazes me, though, how many systems rely on the application to
> manage data integrity.  I work as IT director for a large-size
> manufacturer and *none* of our applications use integrity.

I supose you are new in the position ;-)

> In fact, I had rarely open a database properly normalized and
> inforced ... and I have been working with databases for over 10 years,
> mostly in sectors where lack of integrity can result in dramatic
> consequences.

I have the same experience, and I never have found an IT director who thinks like you.

> What is wrong with modern DB design approaches?  And what's the point
> of using a big relational DB without the benefits of integrity and
> normalization?

The problem is not in modern database theory, the problem is that most developers don't know the foundations of their profession and common sense is very uncommon.

In my country most people who develop business systems never read a database theory book. The few ones who studied a database course in the university never understood database theory very well at all, and they forgot almost everything just on the end of the final examination.

The textbook we used didn't have any chapter devoted to database integrity, only a few pages about the poor SQL declarative integrity support, and not covered with exercices. The whole Relational Model was dispatched in five hours or so, and taught with many mistakes and misconceptions.

The vendor's training materials are usually even worse.

And we also have all that abject oriented programming stuff saying that RDBMS's are nothing but silly and cumbersome register buckets.

It is not only integrity and normalization. Most developers I know are not able to write non trivial queries and they load the data in the applications using simple queries, make several iterations on the registers, and send the data back to the DBMS.

In the business software industry, technical incompetence is the norm, and the develpment tools we have are awful.

Regards Received on Mon Oct 06 2008 - 00:56:07 CEST