Path: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu!spool.maxwell.syr.edu!drn.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!feed.news.tiscali.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!not-for-mail From: Kenneth Downs Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory Subject: Re: 4 the FAQ: Are Commercial DBMS Truly Relational? Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 17:08:58 -0400 Lines: 33 Message-ID: References: <2srmk1F1njk29U1@uni-berlin.de> <41690aad$0$59441$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net> <41699ee7$0$54819$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net> Reply-To: sameas@email.address Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de tRrxMLb1cAl1NylR16hujQpGcUHoJx5UyJWCXE8n2UXtcdNAH2 X-Orig-Path: mercury.downsfam.net!nobody User-Agent: KNode/0.7.7 Xref: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu comp.databases.theory:26745 Paul wrote: > Kenneth Downs wrote: >> Have you ever "optimized" the work of others after the fact? I was in a >> situation once where I optimized several programs, gaining performance >> improvements in every case counting between 1-3 orders of magnitude. The >> supervisor was astonished and asked me how I did it. In each case the >> answer was the same, the program was doing too much work. It would do a >> lot of wrong work, and then somewhere do the right work. The entire >> optimization effort was in reducing the program to doing only what was >> necessary. There may have been a couple of tricks-of-the-trade for the >> platform in question, but mostly it was eliminating work. > > I've also found that, paradoxically, a lot of the most useful work I've > done has actually been getting rid of code, rather than writing it. > > Sometimes code is built up piecemeal until you can't really see what it > does. Then you delete maybe 90% of the code and it actually works better > than before. Of course, you have to be very careful you don't remove > some obscure logic that was necessary (maybe a workaround for some rare > problem or DBMS bug that wasn't documented properly). But I find usually > that, as well as providing performance benefits, such an exercise > actually highlights hidden logical errors with the existing code that > no-one had every noticed before. > > Paul. I think you explained it better than I did. -- Kenneth Downs Use first initial plus last name at last name plus literal "fam.net" to email me