Re: Dreaming About Redesigning SQL

"Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote in message news:<8e6dnWQ_fM6-JTaiRVn-iw_at_golden.net>...
> "andrewst" <member14183_at_dbforums.com> wrote in message
> news:3571843.1068213473_at_dbforums.com...
> > Originally posted by Mike Preece
> > > > > Why were RVAs intoduced (or accepted) into relational theory in the
> > > > > firs..., I mean, 10 years ago?
> > > > If you really want to understand this,
> > > Not really, to be honest.
> Honesty at last. The ignorance is willful.

As to honesty - if you cared about that you would have left the context in instead of trying to hide (snip) it.

As to my willful ignorance - if you had left the context in it would be clear *why* I don't want to get bogged down in researching the attempt a couple of guys made 10 years ago to introduce something that hardly anyone ever uses when what they seem to have been attempting to do was mimic functionality that has been available in a simple, easy to use and much exploited form with Pick from day one. As most of the people participating in this newsgroup have more background knowledge of the work of Date & Darwen than I do I expected someone to be able to summarise the salient facts for me. It seems no one is able to do that - including you. I do wonder why that is. If it bugs me enough I might just have to delve into it. It's of interest to me - or I wouldn't have asked the question, but not vitally important.

What has been painfully obvious in your posts in this and many other threads is that you don't really give a damn about honesty. All you seem to really care about is sniping away and insulting anyone with a different perspective on things. I admire Voltaire for the courage he had to say what he thought was right at whatever cost, and also for his insistence that everyone else have the right to disagree with him. I wonder if he would have felt the same way if he had participated in newsgroup discussions with Monsieur Badour.

> > > From what I've read I'm pretty sure we've
> You read?!? Well, I suppose that's trivially true if one ignores
> comprehension.

'You talking to me? I said: "Are you talking to *me*?"

Now what does that add to the discussion? Let's keep egos out of this.

> > > It's logical to store phone numbers against a person. It's also more
> > > efficient.
> > .. in Pick. It is not more efficient in an RDBMS. But anyway my point
> > was that you are saying that the query by phone would also be "extremely
> > efficient". But presumably not AS efficient as the query by name, since
> > you say that is "more efficient".
> > So, you have:
> > Query By Efficiency
> > Name X
> > Phone Y
> > where X > Y
> > Whereas in relational we have:
> > Query By Efficiency
> > Name X
> > Phone Y
> > and we can choose whether X = Y, X > Y or X < Y according to decisions
> > made at the PHYSICAL level, which do not require any change at the
> > LOGICAL level, i.e. the SQL for a given query remains unchanged.
> >
> > You of course will contend that the Pick X is better than the RDBMS X,
> > and I will disagree, but we can't really test that here can we?
> > However, I will say that in Oracle (e.g.) it is perfectly possible that
> > the query to list "Mike" and all his phone numbers can be achieved with
> > 1 disk read, provided the data is clustered and fits into 1 block
> > (typically 4K or 8K); or 0 disk reads if we read the same block earlier
> > and it is still in the cache.
> > > > > Let's look at the evidence:
> > > > > We agree that the person is more relevant in the persons to phones
> > > > > relationship.
> > > > But we disagree over whether that is necessarily relevant to logical
> > > > database design.
> > > I thought we agreed that when we were concentrating only on logical
> > > design.
> If that is so, why does he constantly mention efficiency?

You're not talking to me? There is an inconsistency in your approach. If you'd said "do you" instead of "does he" you'd have saved a byte too. It makes sense to do things efficiently.  

> He is too ignorant
> and too stupid to know the difference between logic and physics.

Interesting isn't it. A good friend of mine has just completed his Masters Degree. He studied Mathematics & Philosophy. I'm sure he would have an interesting contribution to make to this discussion. Perhaps even more interesting than yours.

> > It just so happens that Pick has no concept of logical/physical
> > distinction. That is Pick's handicap, not relational's. Sorry if you
> > have a hard time understanding that. You have NO CHOICE over logical
> > design: it HAS to correspond to the physical design you select for
> > performance reasons; we have choice: our logical design is optimised
> > for querying, our physical design is optimised for performance.
> > Forget RVAs.
> > > Maybe it's time for a new thread. This one has gone OT.
> > Agreed, this should come to a close. If you still don't get what I've
> > been saying, then you never will. This is probably due as much to my
> > shortcomings as a teacher of the relational model as to your failure to
> > understand what I have said.
> Nah! Even if you had no shortcomings at all, Mike would still fail to learn
> anything. He simply lacks the ability to learn. The only interesting
> question is: Is Mike's cognitive void innate or was it acquired through Pick
> use?

If you'd been paying attention you would have noticed that I have thanked Tony and others for things I have learnt in this discussion. I am always interested to learn something new. Why don't you surprise me and expose a different side to your character? I know enough about your penchant for insult and invective. It might amuse some for a while but I'm sure they too will tire of it eventually.

> > > from disk (irrespective of the size of the Phones file). Oh I get it -
> > > Bob's 8-fold improvement jiggery pokery trick? Ha. Haha. Ha. Hmmm... I
> > > guess my sense of humour must be different to his. Seriously though -
> > > what is the equivalent SQL statement to get the same information?
> There was no jiggery pokery. You simply lack the ability to conceive
> reality. If your fantasies amuse you, I am happy for you.

Sincerely? How touching.

Go on then... Tell us again the one about how you can get all of the required data from disk into memory in less than one disk access - or was it less than 0.125 of a disk access? No jiggery pokery now! From a standing start. Nothing up your sleeves.

> > And no, we can't beat your single read of 2k from disk
> Sure we can. You lack imagination. I suggest your pedagogic approach is
> counter-productive.

You're getting all mixed up now Bob. Who're you addressing this to now? You're a scary man Bob. Broad-minded I might be, but I'm not sure I'm prepared for what your imagination might conjure up. I've a feeling it wouldn't be good.

> > > Would the statement be identical whether the data is coming from the
> > > PersonsPhones table or from RVAs in the Persons file?
> > No, because those are 2 different LOGICAL designs. But the statement
> > would be identical regardless of any physical optimisations we might
> > make such as:
> > 1) physically cluster the phone data with the person (like your Persons
> > file with the phone MV attribute)
> > 2) physically cluster the person data with the phone
> > 3) store the phone data and person data independently

So that's it? I've gone through your entire post and what does it consist of? What have you added to the discussion? Your own personal views about what you think of other people you have never met. You have selectedly edited other peoples contributions in order to post nothing but insults and invective in a snide and indirect, cowardly fashion.

How about an answer to this question:

If there is an abstraction layer between the application and the database how would your logical design differ from your physical design?

Bear in mind when you answer this that we need to know *nothing* about the internal workings of the abstraction layer. We ask for something like "What do we know about Bob Badour?" or "What do we know about invoice 12345?".

Mike. Received on Sun Nov 09 2003 - 00:44:08 CET