Re: WWW/Internet 2009: 2nd CFP until 21 September

"paul c" <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac> wrote in message news:fN_fm.38515$Db2.11300_at_edtnps83...
> Walter Mitty wrote:
> ...
>> This reminds me of the years I used to teach database courses. Sooner or
>> later, a little over halfway through the course, students would begin
>> asking why there was so much politics around the databases back at their
>> work site. I learned to answer them thus:
>>
>> Knowledge is power. So said Francis Bacon.
>> Data is like knowledge in this regard.
>> When a database is successful, data gets shared.
>> When data gets shared, power gets shared.
>> When power gets shared, that's politics!
>> ...
>
> A lot of people from more or less unrelated fields such as chemistry went
> into IT because the pay was much better. Plus, whenever bigger money is
> involved, plenty of charlatans are sure to show up and get away with
> outlandish promises. Plus, the people who sign the cheques often want to
> be told what they want to believe rather than what's actually possible.
> In that way, most executives are no different than the janitor who wanted
> the computer to pick the horses for him. The phenomenon you mention is
> partly the result of a secret conspiracy. Most don't really want
> simplcity, even though they talk about it.
>
>
> If SQL won't support mutual foreign key references, the usual attitude is
> to introduce some other complication such as the recent nulls suggestion
> here, rather than do the obvious, namely toss the impossible requirement.

I'm confused. What requirement are you referring to? Are you referring to the requirement that nulls be eliminated or the fact that an order isn't an order without a delivery destination? The referential cycle was a consequence of trying to eliminate nulls. Received on Wed Aug 12 2009 - 15:22:00 CEST