Re: foundations of relational theory? - some references for the truly starving

"Paul Vernon" <paul.vernon_at_ukk.ibmm.comm> wrote in message news:bn31ff$aie$2_at_gazette.almaden.ibm.com...
> "cmurthi" <xyzcmurthi_at_quest.with.a.w.net> wrote in message
> news:3F9493FD.5080305_at_quest.with.a.w.net...
> > Firstly, thanks, Paul for non-polemic reasoning, and for explaining one
> > difference between the way relational and [Pick] dbs's treat data.
>
> Well I was guessing that Bob wasn't making much headway. ;-)

I added Mr. Murthi to my twit filter ages ago. Works for me. ;-)

> > It's interesting (and surprisingly fuzzy, using "democracy" and lack of
> > parent-child constraints as a paradigm,) but no less an important
> > theoretical point. From a *practical* viewpoint, having been in the
> > systems and applications trenches long enough, using Pick, not sure it's
> > important enough...ie, the need in Pick of having to establish a
> > master-slave relationship among the data is both convenient and models
> > the real world; it does not *necesarily* constrain you from viewing the
> > data on a level, "democratic" field, though I will concede that there
> > may be efficiency problems. As always, good design will triumph over
> > most odds.
> >
> > It's obvious that there is not a lot of academic writing about Pick; for
> > the most part it has been ignored by theorists.

The fatal error in Mr. Murthi's logic is the assumption that the theorists must have ignored Pick if they have nothing positive to say about it.

> I'm guessing people bundle it in the same class as IMS DL/1, and when they
> used to bother, took IMS as the archetype on so forgot about other
(possibly
> similar) systems.
> P.S. I'm guessing that IMS is still much bigger (in terms of number of
> users, licence revenue, amount of data stored) than Pick? Is that correct?
> (ducks)
>
> > As one steeped in theory
> > through my academic years, I've never shed any tears over this; but it's
> > equally obvious that trying to explain the model to those who look at
> > the world through a relational lens is difficult at best.

The fatal flaw in Mr. Murthi's logic is the assumption that advocates of the relational model somehow fail to understand Pick. I understand it more than well enough to reject it, and I observe that Pick advocates have very little understanding of AQL as evidenced by the whole red]blue car exchange. Received on Tue Oct 21 2003 - 16:49:30 CEST