Re: Why are [Database] Mathematicians Crippled ?

Op vrijdag 30 januari 2015 22:00:56 UTC+1 schreef Tegiri Nenashi:
> On Friday, January 30, 2015 at 12:01:04 PM UTC-8, Norbert_Paul wrote:
> > > No, I think you misunderstand what he is trying to do and what he is asking.
> > > He is proposing an extension of the relational model with new concepts that
> > > can deal with data that represents toplogies over other data. And his
> > > question is if practitioners could make sense of these concepts and use
> > > them.
> > >
> > > The answer seems to be "no".
> >
> > Yes, obviously.

Derek seems to think it was already already implemented in commercial DBMSs 20 years ago.

> There is a reason for that. As Todd J. Green eloquently put it, database practitioners are buried in a soul crushing routine work (select * from employees and some such). There is not a lot of insight to gain there.

Well, yes and no, the concepts should of course be intuitive for the intended users and it is always easy to fool yourself into thinking that it is, but, yes, it might be a particular class of users that we don't find here. FWIW, I do think there is indeed something interesting going on in Norbert's ideas, but I'm just not sure what exactly it is. It reminded me a little of work on data provenance, where sometimes algebra operators produce their normal result plus a structure indicating the provenance of each record in the result. But that's only a vague connection.

• Jan Hidders