Re: Sensible and NonsenSQL Aspects of the NoSQL Hoopla

Jan Hidders wrote:
> On 2013-09-01 18:37:17 +0000, Norbert_Paul said:
>
>> The paper does not mention the spatial databasers. What are their
>> historical part of the NoSQL movement?
>
> I don't think has played a big part in practice, although the NoSQL
> advocates nodoubt will be happy to use it as ammunition when arguing
> that there are inadequacies to be found in the relational model and/or SQL.

The author is one of (maybe /the/)the most influential protagonists in spatial data and Geoinformation. Whereas the paper may not have been important the author surely is.

>> For example http://www.spatial.maine.edu/~max/RJ6.html not only argues
>> against actual shortcomings of SQL1 in the standard of 1898
>> http://www2.yk.psu.edu/~lxn/IST_210/sql1_versus_sql2.html
>> but also against the relational model. However, I simply don't get
>> some of the arguments therein:
>
> [.. SNIP ..]
>
> Neither do I, and my compliments for the analyis. Am I right in reading
> some irritation between the lines that goes beyond a natural distaste
> for shoddy reasoning?

Yes. The irriatation is based on bad personal experience within the last three years. For example a (deliberate?) publication delay of more than three years. There seems to be an extremely influential group of researchers around the author where this kind of shoddy (thanks for the new vocabulary) work is the only one accepted. Have a look at "alternating hierarchical decomposition" (AHD). It just doesn't work in 3D. Or consider "topological relations" and "nine intersections". Each paper has its own definition of "region". Still all claim that only eight (or nine) such intersections can occur on "regions" but most papers have no valid proof.

> What to say about these things? Yes, it is unfortunate that in this type
> of papers, where certain languages or models are bashed and other are
> promoted, for some reason all basic scientific principles seem to go out
> of the window and all reasoning becomes more or less based on intuitive
> gut-feeling and uncritically accepting communis opinio from the
> community that the writer is publishing in. Science should be about
> critically and skeptically investigating claims or providing good
> evidence for them that convinces the informed intelligent but skeptical
> reader. But there are practical reasons that I'm all too familiar with
> for why for real-world database researcher that bar is often a bit too
> high.

The problem is, when evidence is given, reviewers say that this is "too abstract and technical" or they have an article wait forever to become published. On the other hand, when a scientist's position is secured he can make /any/ claim without any evidence. I thought this could be an alternative channel here to post something critical. There is no reviewing on comp.databases.theory.

> For the record, as you know I'm also very critical of the relational
> camp around Date, Fabian etc., and in fact of the opinion that they also
> commit offences against proper scientific etiquette that are at least as
> bad.

I will look up Date and Fabian. Are they influential?

> PS. Nice to see that there seems to be a little bit of life coming back
> to comp.databases.theory. :-)

OK. Let's start the party.

Norbert Paul Received on Wed Sep 04 2013 - 07:28:01 CEST