Re: Modeling question...

Bob Badour wrote:
...
> All you have done is introduce a physical artifact into the logical
> domain where it must now be maintained and manipulated by users instead
> of maintained and manipulated automatically by the dbms. A physical
> pointer unseen at the logical level would accomplish the very same
> physical performance characteristics (perhaps even better performance)
> without polluting the logical design.

Yes (if one sees all users as equal insiders or outsiders, take your pick). But as far as I know, the slow boat to China still gets you there. It seems to me an easy feature to build in to a dbms, if only the developers of those would think a little more. If it were up to me, I'd simply allow an optional "indirection" keyword to an attribute's definition. But I suppose I would hide that from the logical definition that unwashed users could see, in other words, there would ideally always be at least two kinds of definitions beyond the usual hardware/OS-specific stuff.

Come to think of it, not all dba's are equal. I remember a Canuck gov't department where two (female) of the three dba's did all the work. When they both took a "mental health" day off, the third (male) couldn't open anything for me because the girls refused to give him the passwords. Turned out he only got the job because he was bilingual. (not to single out Canada, a big UK gov't department got into even wilder and much more expensive hijinks.) Received on Fri Nov 14 2008 - 23:40:15 CET