Re: Is this group dead?

On Wed, 16 Mar 2016 10:37:58 +0000 (UTC) Roy Hann <specially_at_processed.almost.meat> wrote:

> There is no good reason why the ideas discussed here couldn't be
> discussed on LinkedIn or similar. But any good points would be diluted
> to homepathic concentrations owing to the vastly greater number of
> resolutely ignorant participants there.

Actually, you just contradicted yourself there: homeopathic concentration is a good reason.

I have yet to see a better forum for online discussion than a mailing list or the usenet. All discussions brought into the user's preferred client, organized in a familiar way in an application that's almost certainly aleady open for other reasons. Every other venue looks to me like an attempt, quoting Bill Gates, to "decommoditize the Internet".

The "problem" for c.d.t, if there is one, is that there's not much to talk about. The basic theory was established decades ago. Database theory is not a very popular academic discipline anymore. (No offense intended at all.) The problems practicians regularly encounter are often the product of engineering choices, and are met with a collective head shake. As a theory group, it's not the place where new engineering solutions or practical additions are announced or hashed over.

An example: In December 2014 we discussed relational division, an operation not directly supported by SQL. The discussion was illuminating, but the topic is hardly controversial, and the subject was exhausted fairly quickly. No one proposed modifying SQL (as if!) or cited papers on, say, parallel algorithms for relational division. *That* kind of thing could be debated endlessly. But in terms of the theory itself, there wasn't much to say.

--jkl Received on Wed Mar 16 2016 - 18:24:50 CET