Re: Much Ado about Nothing

Bob,

You stole my thunder. I was heading, through a long, slow curve ball, towards quoting one of my favorite sayings of all time, from Date: "Theory is practical."

Maybe I'll get there, anyway.

I was referring to myself as a "practical type" not as a way to deprecate theory, but rather as a way to classify myself. I'm not a theoretician, like some people in this newsgroup are. But I nonetheless think I have something to contribute.

With regard to SQL, I think it succeeded much the way a lot of de facto standards (e.g. HTML) succeeded. It was functional enough to be imitated, and it got an early lead. In the case of SQL, the early lead came from the fact that IBM got behind it.

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Regards,
    David Cressey
    www.dcressey.com