Re: TRM - Morbidity has set in, or not?

paul c wrote:
> Marshall Spight wrote:
> >
> > The "transrelational" stuff doesn't have much written about it. I can't
> > find anything to suggest that it's anything besides a
> > traditional column store.
>
> [...] Still, I've seen a
> few implementations towards similar ends and at one time followed a lot
> of the literature and I've never actually seen anybody implement or
> describe anything quite like it, so even though it seems obvious it
> doesn't look mainstream traditional to me.

My understanding is that the column store technique dates from perhaps the 1970s, and has been used in many special-purpose stores over the years. (This is not the same as being part of a dbms, but it's still use.)

> > Various parties, including FP himself, have on occasion said, "oh no,
> > it's much more than that" but they don't back it up at all, so their
> > claims are unevaluable.
> > ...
>
> I believe he is bound by some non-disclosure agreement and since the
> business involved has gone awry, he is stuck. So you can hardly blame
> him except perhaps for not having the foresight to sign a NDA that had
> no expiry date.

I don't "blame" him, but I do note that he does not back up any of the claims he makes relative to "transrelational". So his claims are unevaluable. They might be true, or they might be false; we have no way of knowing.

My policy towards unevaluable statements is to ignore them until they become evaluable.

> > Michael Stonebreaker has a small company that is selling a column
> > store; it looks quite interesting.
>
> After a promising start many years ago, Stonebraker has long been a tech
> salesman for various fads.

Do you speak from personal experience here?

Stonebraker started studying relational in 1973. DBMSs that he's lead the develompent of include Ingres, Illustra, Postgres, Cohera, and StreamBase. He is the recipient of the IEEE Von Neuman medal, which has also gone to such people as Gordon Bell, Fred Brooks, Don Knuth, and Alfred Aho.

> > As an aside, I note that Mr. Pascal spends quite a lot of time telling
> > us
> > how smart and logical he is, ...
>
> Well, I've read at least a few hundred pages written by him and although
> I didn't understand parts of it, I can't recall him boasting about
> himself, not even once.

I will admit that FP writes much more about the deficiencies of his opponents than about his own virtues. But doesn't a statement like "I BACK UP my claims with evidence and logic" sound familiar? In other words, he uses evidence and logic, and his opponents don't. But what does he mean when he says he uses logic in his arguments? He certainly doesn't mean predicate calculus. Have you ever seen him use, say modus ponens? So in that context, when he says "I use logic" what he is really just saying is "I'm right." He's not talking about the use of formal methods.

> From what I've read, most of his "opponents" haven't got the foggiest
> of what he is talking about.

So he keeps telling us. (Although I do not disagree with the sentiment that there is a lot of ignorance to go around.)

> > I wonder: has he ever
> > accomplished anything that would back up his claims? Has he ever
> > published a proof? Published a paper in a peer-reviewed journal?
> > Made use of any formal methods? Written any software? To my
> > knowledge, he has published two books, one of them "Practical
> > Issues is Database Management". Which was a fine book, although
> > the last person I leant it to noted "you could hear the axe grinding
> > on every page."
>
> Yes, he has performed a public service, mostly without gain to himself
> whereas many of the "opponents" puff fools-gold because it is in their
> own interest to make systems bigger and more grandiose than they need to
> be. IT being a modern-day goldrush is full of carpet-baggers always
> promising more than they can deliver.

In other words, he's a consultant and public speaker. I've done both of those things myself.

But what I asked was, has he ever accomplished anything? Can you find a mathematical proof anywhere on dbdebunk?

> Some chemistry and other Ph.D's
> got into programming because there's more money in it plus they were
> second-rate in their first field anyway.

This statement is mostly unevaluable. But I will offer as a counterexample
this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jacobson

who I used to work with. Wikipedia says his work "is said to have saved the Internet from collapsing due to traffic in 1988-1989." His PhD is in physics.

> Peer review means less and
> less now and is often a joke - more like a cover to protect "jobs for
> the boys". CS credentials are usually a tawdry peerage - most of those
> "peers" should demand refunds of their tuition fees but only a few have
> the brains to see this and even fewer have the guts.

In other words, everyone is stupid, so the fact that FP doesn't publish in peer reviewed journals is irrelevant.

Publishing in peer reviewed journals remains the gold standard for academic achievement. In other words, it is how we judge "evidence and logic." The system is imperfect: like democracy, it is the worst thing possible, except for every alternative. It is certainly preferable to, say, putting up a website where you make fun of your debating opponents names, control every aspect of the presentation of the debate yourself, and refuse to publish any corrections or updates that they send you.

Marshall Received on Sat May 13 2006 - 05:29:40 CEST