Re: Poll: What percentage advantage are RDBMS vendors taking of the RM?
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 09:47:24 -0500
Message-ID: <12Vue.29$_r5.4259_at_news.uswest.net>
On 6/23/2005 5:56 PM, lauri.pietarinen_at_atbusiness.com wrote:
> mountain man wrote:
>
>>How much now, as a percentage out of 100, are contributors >>to this newsgroup prepared to estimate the "realisation" of the >>relational model of data within the SQL-DBMS vendors >>(ie: IBM - DB2, Oracle, MS - SQL Server) >>
>
>
> I think it's like asking "How much, as a percentage out of 100,
> was calculus "realised" in the 18th century by the current
> mathematicians", such as Lagrange and Euler. They surely made lot's of
> important discoveries, but still further important work was to come
> after the "cleaning up" of Analysis by the likes of Cauchy, Gauss and
> Riemann. For instance there was not even a proof for the binominal
> theorem when n is not an integer greater than zero until Gauss gave
> one. 1)
>
I think it was Riemann who put Calculus on solid ground with his idea of how to define continuity (at least that's what I remember from my Real Analysis class many years ago). I also think he went insane. And I don't blame him as he was a trail blazer.
> So, from the perspective of the 18th century the answer would have
> maybe been close to 80, but we now know that they had barely scratched
> the surface!
>
> Likewise, since the RM is a mathematical theory, we don't really know
> where it will lead us in the future. However, it is important to try
> to keep the theory "clean" even though the practical consequences are
> not obvious at the time or might even cause some backsteps. The
> products (such as DB2, Oracle and SQLServer) are chained to their
> current user base and they don't really have a way out. They can only
> go towards increased complexity. That is not to say that they are not
> useful. But they are probably not in the position to take advantage of
> advances in the theory of the RM, or even realise it's current
> potential.
>
> Regards,
> Lauri Pietarinen
>
> 1) E.T. Bell, Men of Mathematics, p. 222
>
Received on Fri Jun 24 2005 - 16:47:24 CEST