Re: Sensible and NonsenSQL Aspects of the NoSQL Hoopla

On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 15:27:04 -0700 (PDT) vldm10 <vldm10_at_yahoo.com> wrote:

> Dana srijeda, 4. rujna 2013. 18:35:36 UTC+2, korisnik Jan Hidders
> napisao je:
> > Codd explicitly referred to first-order logic in his work, so the
> > link with Frege was clearly made.
>
> Gottlob Frege is a scientist, who in the last ten years, emerges to
> the surface as a scientist of great importance. Lately, more and more
> scientists reveals its importance in mathematics, philosophy and
> other sciences. Some of the most famous scientists proclaim him as
> the greatest mathematician and philosopher, so far.
...
> 3) Frege developed completely FOL. He introduced formal language for
> FOL and he developed philosophy for spoken languages. I will mention
> only the part which is related to Predicate Calculus. I will briefly
> described Frege?s ideas that are related to sentences, names and
> predicates. I already mentioned that the meaning of a sentence is its
> truth value. The meaning of names was elaborated in Frege?s deep
> theory about names. This theory has changed many things in science.
> So if somebody says that E. Codd was the first who introduced the new
> representation of the relations by using names, then it is the false
> sentence. Even more, it seems to me that this claim implies that E.
> Codd in fact introduced relationships between names and predicates.

Vladimir, I don't know what you're so exercised about.

However important Frege may be, predicate logic was only something Codd used. I'm unware of any claim he made to extending it. The idea that one could convert the proposition

        the box is red

to the predicate

        ? is red

has been around a long time. No one disputes that.

Codd simply applied logic to database theory, which at the time didn't exist. But simple it wasn't, and isn't yet still.

When nearly everyone else was treating database management as an engineering problem -- as, by and large, everyone still does -- Codd recognized that databases could be defined in terms of predicates, thus vastly simplifying the query language, never mind query construction.

That was a great insight. He may not have been the only one to have it, but he got credit for it. Someone must, just ask Leibniz. He also carried the ball far enough to change the industry for the better, something that doesn't happen very often. And he left us a theory that has yet to be improved on in any fundamental way. Not bad for an afternoon's work.

Lots of people work in a field for a lifetime without advancing it one iota. For all intents and purposes, Codd invented his. Don't you think that's worthy of recognition?

--jkl Received on Tue Sep 24 2013 - 01:57:40 CEST