Re: WWW/Internet 2009: 2nd CFP until 21 September

On Aug 10, 10:20 am, paul c <toledobythe..._at_oohay.ac> wrote:

> In the 1960's, let alone the 1970's, "large scale sharing of data" by
> people was already a given requirement, no matter whether the vehicle
> was hierarchies or graph designs.  The more urgent problem, recognized
> even by the Codasyl people, was sharing of data by applications..

Your view is revisionist.

Back in the days of the "mythical man-month", the issue was cost. Those who were paying for applications development were well aware that modifications to "large, shared data banks" were rendering existing applications inoperable, hence they were losing their investments and had to reinvest in reimplementations. Codd explored ordering-, indexing- and access path dependencies and showed that data independence in his relational approach would make apps immune from changes necessitated by the addition of new apps.

It is fashionable in cdt to "hate" hierarchical and network models, and although we've gained logical- and physical independence from the relational data model, the price has been that persons of ordinary logic- and programming skills cannot interact with relational databases via SQL, the std interface. It's what keeps so many database experts employed.

Imagine how many more people could use database technology if instead of sets and joins they could "see" data independent ordered lists and ordered hierarchies, regardless of what technologies underlies it.

Rob Received on Wed Aug 12 2009 - 01:50:27 CEST