Re: foundations of relational theory?

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message
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> > "Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message


> > news:MDomb.23527$HS4.91636_at_attbi_s01...

> >

> > > One thing this thread has gotten me thinking about is the agility

> > question.

There are limits to everything, of course. When I say Pick lacks it, Pick lacks it completely. When comparing two logical data models, one must ask which of the two provides more logical independence. When trying to improve the state of the art of technology, one must ask how one might get more logical independence than is currently available.

> > [lots of "you can use" statements snipped]
> >
> > > Relations look like the clear winner to me.
> >
> > One might use some as yet unidentified structure. Dawn wants to
contribute
> > something as important as any contribution by Aristotle, Boole or
Goedel.
> > She is welcome to try.
>
> Indeed. I don't expect her, or anyone else for that matter, to make
> such a discovery.

I expect someone to make one eventually. However, I expect the change will be more evolutionary than revolutionary.

> But that doesn't mean the exercise is without
> value. For example, Dawn has criticized the fact that in current
> practice, it may takes some time for an application programmer
> to get a DBA to make a needed schema change. This is a very
> real issue that affects me regularly; I'm interested to hear her
> take on the issue. Maybe she has useful ideas that will make
> this less of a problem.

At the same time, I have often had to wait while another programmer checked in some source code I needed to alter. That does not suggest to me to do away with revision control.

> Of course, this issue is one of practice and not one of
> foundations, but that's okay. If someone solves this issue
> while mistakenly believing it to be a foundational issue,
> it is still solved.
>
> Although I don't believe Dawn will invent a new logical
> structure, I could imagine she might come up with something
> interesting about schema change management. And even
> if she doesn't, that will help me understand the degree of
> hardness of the problem, and the degree to which the
> problem is fundamental.
>
> From her and others' posts, it sounds like Pick makes
> schema change management easy. I'd like to understand
> why: does it come at a cost of expressiveness, is it
> a well-designed tool, what?

Given Pickies' general inability to comprehend their own statements, I doubt the legitimacy of the claim in the first place. Let me know if you discover something different. Received on Sun Oct 26 2003 - 00:51:01 CEST