Re: Hierachical structures - an overview

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:sPqKb.233306$8y1.1038772_at_attbi_s52...
> "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message
news:btc8vb$721$1_at_news.netins.net...
> >
> > Number of tables is not a primary metric for me, however, I do think it
> > counter-productive as well as counter-intuitive that if one prepares a
table
> > of books and another of authors, for example, and would like to
associate
> > the authors with the book, then in a relational model (and only in a
> > relational model, it seems) one needs to have a book-author relationship
> > table with two rows for a book with two authors. In most other models,
one
> > could have the book "file" point to the two authors with a field that is
a
> > list. It is often the case with such models that for efficiency, there
are
> > "return links" on the authors as well to point to their books, so
> > referential integrity must be retained in both files. But the advantage
is
> > much more than having fewer tables -- it is in having tables that make
sense
> > to human beings in the way we use language and perceive objects.
>
> I don't think that pointers qualify as something that falls within "the
way we
> use language and perceive objects." Humans have to be taught about
> pointers and how to use them. Likewise, we have to be taught how
> to use the relational model. I know of no empirical evidence to suggest
> that one is any more complicated, or harder to learn, than the other.
>
> Return links aren't so much "for efficiency" as they are to enable
> navigation in both directions. This kind of denormalized structure
> is suboptimal because the inherent redundancy in brings subjects
> the data structure to corruption, whereas the very structure of the
> relational equivalent is incapable of not being self-consistent.
>
>
> Marshall

I understand the reasons for the relational model and agree that this self-consistent aspect is there.

I do not have emperical data, but really want to collect some related to data models and corresponding software developer productivity. If anyone knows of any studies of this, please let me know.

I have information that I would consider to be short of scientific proof, but definitely worthy of a solid hypothesis that companies whose software developers write & maintain or implement (packaged software) and extend software applications non-1NF data models save their companies significant dollars when compared to similar companies that employ relational database solutions. This is a hypothesis that I would like to see tested in a variety of ways, and I am starting by looking at the data models behind each to see if there really is something "holy" about the relational theories (and I fail to be convinced to date).

I'd like to get a "software bake off" going, but would want to see what current software development environments are both most productive for the development of AND for the maintenance of software applications. So,. this contest would be complex to develop. To get funding for such a "software bake off" I thought of perhaps approaching the Mountain Dew folks since many software developers are their customers (addicts, in fact) and see if they could sponsor a contest called "Dew IT". Whaddaya think?

smiles. --dawn Received on Tue Jan 06 2004 - 05:47:57 CET