Dr. Codd Was Right: An Open and Shut Case

The Kleptocracy of Muskistan Devours You

The world is not linear.
-- Dr. McElhone/1974

[T]he massive push to relocate federal jobs outside the Beltway comes with the risk of kneecapping agencies through the loss of experienced workers and bogging them down in logistical minutia.
-- Curt Devine/2024 [that's the point: make the Damn Gummint incompetent, then destroy it because it's incompetent]

Scientists aren't vocal enough about science. There are large groups of people who think scientists are all frauds and who don't believe in science, and they're being cultured by some of our far right-wing politicians, religious leaders and community leaders.
-- Drew Weissman/2022

To date, Microsoft is stating that organizations testing In-Memory OLTP have seen transaction speeds improve by up to 30 times compared to past performance, with the best performance gains achieved when the business logic resides in the database and not in the applications.
-- Jonathan Watts/2015 [my emphasis]

I have had to explain and re-explain and re-explain and re-explain, you know, how relational databases work, what is an eigenvector, what is dimensionality reduction.

-- Christopher Wylie/2018

... but Flash-based storage has such a different performance profile from rotating media, that I suspect that it will end up having a large impact on filesystem design. Right now, most filesystems tend to be designed with the latencies of rotating media in mind.

-- Linus Torvalds/2007

I believe quite strongly that, if you think about the issue at the appropriate level of abstraction, you're inexorably led to the position that databases must be relational.

-- Chris Date/2009

This Week's thought

[Scotland's HPV] vaccination program began in 2008, and so far the women who were vaccinated as 12- or 13-year-olds have shown not one single case of cervical cancer. And the rate in women who were vaccinated at later ages was 80% lower than the unvaccinated. Cervical cancer is almost completely preventable through such vaccination programs, and the anti-vaccine activists who have come out against them (such as the dangerous fool nominated to be secretary of HHS) can go to hell.
-- Derek Lowe/2024 [the morons will be running the asylum, if we let them]

See you next week in a brand new show^{©Heckle and Jeckle}

Therefore:

In a time of SSD, multi-core/processor, two terabyte memory and Optane App Direct Mode machines, there is no reason not to build from BCNF data. Time to do what Dr. Codd demonstrated. Technology has finally caught up with the maths.

16 November 2010

An Open and Shut Case

There was an OpenSQL camp up in Cambridge last month, and I considered going, but the agenda listed far too many NoSQL projects. I decided that I'd just spend a long weekend being irritated. Today I read Josh Berkus's write up on lwn.net, and this was the one nugget:

Some of the SQL geeks at the conference discussed how to make developers more comfortable with SQL. Currently many application developers not only don't understand SQL, but actively hate and fear it. The round-table discussed why this is and some ideas for improvement, including: teaching university classes, contributing to object-relational mappers (ORMs), explaining SQL in relation to functional languages, doing fun "SQL tricks" demos, and working on improving DBA attitudes towards developers.

There are times (quite often, truth be told) that I wish the relationalists had the gonads of the Right Wingnut Zealots or Tea Baggers or what-have-you. The RM isn't just another data store. By attempting to make nice with folks who refuse to listen, you'll just tick off the folks who do get it, but won't convince those who've no intention of being swayed. Use relational databases to make better systems than the knuckleheads who belittle them. Don't get mad (well, a bit some times), get even.

If you go and read the piece, you'll find the attendees worrying about problems that the commercial vendors (with lots more folks, of course) dealt with years, if not decades, ago. Some of the problems are fully discussed in textbooks; Weikum & Vossen in particular. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. If you want minimal byte footprint, maximum structural integrity, minimum modification hassle, then the RM as embodied in current industrial strength RDBMS's is the way to go. Open Source databases can do the same, so long as they concentrate on implementing the fundamentals, and stop worrying about pandering to the FOTM programming language. Languages will come and go (COBOL and java relegated to Big Business), but the data is forever. Best put it some place safe.

Dr. Codd Was Right

The Kleptocracy of Muskistan Devours You

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16 November 2010

An Open and Shut Case

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