Re: We're doomed

Walter Mitty wrote:

> Second, note that "the application" is singular. This way of doing business
> applies only when a database is embedded within a single application. If a
> database is an information nexus allowing multiple applications to provide
> and use shared information, the contracts between applications get drawn
> into the nexus itself. The author makes much of the supposed superior
> scalability of key/value data structures, but there is one way in which
> they scale very poorly: the transition from embedded in a single
> application to operating as a nexus between multiple applications.
>
> I guess I should acknowledge that majority of today's new databases are of
> the embedded type rather than of the nexus type. That means we fight most
> of the battles on the other side's turf. Maybe that provides an insight
> into how the keepers of the flame can survive the dark ages. I dunno.

A colleague pointed something out to me a few years ago which I have found very useful ever since. In colloquial usage (i.e. anywhere but here), the terms "application" and "database" are completely interchangeable. Our customers and clients simply draw no distinction. The concept of an "information nexus" would be wholly novel to them.

Consider also that IT is still a very immature field and that most of its most senior and influential practitioners are the ones who drifted into it having first been clients.

Things are the way they are because they got to be that way.

-- 
Roy