Re: Impossible Database Design?

JayDee wrote:
> Cheaper? No doubt. Better? I'm not sure.
>
> Snodgrass and Jensen and Christianson and Ben Ziv (I'm apologize if the
> names aren't correct) and others have made immense contributions to the
> field of temporal data.
>
> But have you looked at the solutions presented in the Snodgrass book?
> Yes, it's a significant achievement and, yes, it gets things done using
> SQL, and yes, it may well work. But the complexity! The redundancy!
> The work-arounds! The number of situations which result in
> 'RAISE...ERROR' with no way out! It's an absolute horror.
...

Based on other solutions from some of the SQL crowd, I can believe that without looking at it and the usual unspoken motive probably applies - "jobs for the boys".

> ... Sure,
> convincing someone to implement such a system will keep plently of
> arcane SQL coders pounding keys for quite a long while -- but the
> chances of actually delivering something significant (Say, a design
> that results in more than 100 bi-temporal tables.) and correct are
> slim.
>
> Date's approach seems completely reasonable to me. After all, we are
> dealing with computers, right? The best we can hope for are acceptable
> representations of continuous systems. I mean, is there really a need
> to handle a time interval as an infinite number of instants?
>
> Yes, he presented a language that isn't implemented. Judging from what
> I've seen in SQL-implementations of semi-temporal and bi-temporal data
> stores, it should be!
>
Received on Wed May 17 2006 - 21:23:38 CEST