Re: What is a database?
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 04:42:47 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <5a6ac47f-4f74-48c6-bbd5-01ce638d77b4_at_googlegroups.com>
> On Thursday, 27 February 2014 22:27:20 UTC+11, Jan Hidders wrote:
>
> > On 2014-02-27 01:44:55 +0000, Derek Asirvadem said:
>
> > One answer, really, but in two levels, given the non-computer
> > consideration, which I think is good to maintain. It is normal human
> > logic, and whatever we do in IT should be within that, not outside that.
>
> > Qualifier. I do not believe in the concept of private definitions.
>
> Funny that. I don't believe in public definitions. All a definition is
> and can do is establish how a certain person or group cares to assign a
> meaning to a word or phrase, so in that sense it is always private. It
> tells you nothing about the real world, except what the definer means
> with a certain word.
Ok. We can proceed, as long as ...
In that case, your definition of a definition is your private definition.
It is not worth a response.
It is not a "word". It is a technical term.
Arguing about established public definitions means that either you are unable to comply with them, or your intent is to subvert them.
- I --
It is the disease of the current generation, that they are self-obsessed, self-centred; there have no knowledge of history. It is very sad for one such as I, to witness, over and over again, one development team after another, working out for themselves: what a transaction is; what the best practice is; what OLTP is; oh, oh oh, they need a construct like Optimistic Locking (but they don't know the term); developing it for themselves. It takes decades.
Eventually the company tires of such idiots, or runs out of patience, or runs out of cash and places a finite end to the project budget, and hires me to educate them. I do not sit there playing devil's advocate, and discussing terms, coming up with group definitions of group hugs. That will take a year. I supply a service called Education. That takes days. I give them terms, and the technical definition of those terms (public, standard, accepted definitions, not private ones, definined decades ago, my minds greater than mine), then I give them methods.
Education is a one-way street. If it is a two-way street, it is not education (although some claim it as such, but that is fraud).
Absolutely every single person on the courses always thanks me, specifically for showing them the complete and entire method of how to write their code such that it never deadlocks; promotes high concurrency and high transaction volumes; etc; etc. Absolutely everyone says "I didn't know that there was a method; I didn't know that the term was defined, or that the method existed since the 1960's ... I was just creating it from scratch".
The disease of the current generation.
Education cures ignorance, that is its job.
Discussion, and private definitions, are limited to the sum of the knowledge of the participants, and these days, since they lack genuine education, that sum is very low.
Therefore you can feel free to have your groups and your discussions, and come up with private definitions. I will not be participating. I am quite happy with, and my customers beg for, public definitions, that kills the discussion and the groups and the private definitions. I am here to contribute, for anyone seeking knowledge.
- II --
Krüger & Dunning wrote a great paper on this subject: http://www.softwaregems.com.au/Documents/Reference/Unskilled%20&%20Unaware%201999.pdf
Of course, the powers that are destroying education attacked it, with excreta passed off as knowledge, but the excreta was given a bit of credence by those whose education had already been destroyed, so along with their research students, they flushed the excreta out with an update: http://www.softwaregems.com.au/Documents/Reference/Unskilled%20&%20Unaware%202008.pdf
I charge twice my daily consulting rate for education. Genuine education means that I have to determine and overcome the obstacles in each person, and that always includes a bit of psychology. On a forum such as cdt, it is not possible to deliver education in the normal manner (sure, some "get educated", but that is not education), nor to overcome the obstacles (refer to the JKL post above and my response). Further, the context is discussion and argument at best, a two-way street, so education is not reasonably possible. Therefore please read and absorb the first paper. And if there is anything you feel like attacking, it will almost certainly be answered in the second paper.
- III --
- the Null Problem - the Relational Model --- Order and Ordinals - Normalisation (yes, there is a lot of false info out there, so that one might need filtering) --- both pre-1970 Normalisation, and specifically Relational Normalisationetc.
and if there is no argument, then:
- database
The thread is "what exactly is a database". The thread is not "let's discuss and form a new definition for { database | null | order | normalisation }". I am participating in the former. You are participating in the latter, which prevents progress in the former. I invite you to stop that wasteful effort and start participating in the thread ...
> Arguing about established public definitions means that either you are unable to comply with them, or your intent is to subvert them.
... otherwise you will be, at best, adding nothing to the thread, and at worst, subverting the thread.
That is precisely why, in the real world, at least the educated portion of it, we have defined terms. So that we have an agreed common ground, so that we can progress and reach goals, as opposed to discussing them.
Cheers
Derek
Received on Thu Feb 27 2014 - 13:42:47 CET