3 ms·

The article is worthless: not a single sentence of the first 5 paragraphs of the blog post makes sense when examined critically. The author does not understand

The article is worthless: not a single sentence of the first 5 paragraphs of the blog post makes sense when examined critically. The author does not understand relational databases nor how flexible they are. In fact I'm fairly certain he understands neither OOP, nor RDBMS, nor the Semantic Web (of which I am no proponent) well if at all. Every now and then a developer community bubbles over with complaints about RDBMS and gets some attention. Most support is from people who, like the author, understand OOP to a certain degree but don't understand RDBMS. And time after time predictions of the death of the relational database model prove wrong: RDBMS usage only increases. The relational database model supplanted the network database model (which corresponds to the "graph databases" the author speaks of) for good reasons. Nothing to see here: keep moving folks.

vixen99 19y ago
Am I alone in finding your comment unncessarily unpleasant? Instead of offering unilluminating perjorative rhetoric why don't you provide even one example of why you take issue with the article? Perhaps you're right about it but you give no reason for supposing this to be so. Also, how about letting the well-worn 'move along now' cliche enjoy a well-deserved rest?
- giardini 19y ago
  Perhaps not. No, I believe it makes sense to draw a line. When a person (indeed, even a specialist) claims special insight (including critical insight) of a well-examined problem he is almost always wrong. The physicist John Baez not infrequently encounters cranks who believe they've found errors in relativity theory or quantum mechanics. He has developed a scale for rating cranks: http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics/msg/5312a801e0785e66?hl=en&#38 http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics/msg/5312a801e0785e...; The OP is wrong in so many ways that it renders his article meaningless. And others have pointed out possible errors (although doing so one must interpret the OP's intentions, a risky endeavor indeed), though certainly not to exhaustion. To add a single specific item of criticism to the fray would only provide yet another handle for the OP or other misled persons to grasp and extend the discussion uselessly. The human mind can create ideas, phrases, and analogies some of which, upon further examination, are devoid of meaning. Dreaming is an extreme instance wherein most of the ideas later make no sense. However the same thing can happen while fully conscious and is part of the normal creative process. Mathematics and logic are tools we use for separating empty ideas from useful and meaningful ones. Unfortunately there is no Royal Road to mathematics or logic, nor to relational databases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road I have neither the time, nor the inclination, much less the rhetorical skill to enlighten the OP or this group as to the vagaries of databases. Nor do I view this as a "rhetorical" discussion: rhetoric is concerned with swaying the populace to your side of the argument whether you are correct or not. I am concerned about what is correct rather than what is popular. I do not doubt the enthusiasm (or frustration) of the OP, however his complaints are poorly-stated, unclear and orginate from an incomplete understanding of logic and relational databases. Many similar complaints have been stated before (often much more clearly and in a form arguable) in more appropriate venues (e.g., Google for "relational vs OOP group:comp.*"), where they have been thrashed about thoroughly by better, and worse, men than me. It is one thing to register frustration. But it is another to casually question ideas that have withstood the test of time and cast that questioning as serious. To show that frustration in the development of databases is nothing new see William Kent's "Data and Reality": http://www.amazon.com/Data-Reality-William-Kent/dp/1585009709 http://www.amazon.com/Data-Reality-William-Kent/dp/158500970...

vixen99 19y ago

Am I alone in finding your comment unncessarily unpleasant? Instead of offering unilluminating perjorative rhetoric why don't you provide even one example of why you take issue with the article? Perhaps you're right about it but you give no reason for supposing this to be so. Also, how about letting the well-worn 'move along now' cliche enjoy a well-deserved rest?

giardini 19y ago
Perhaps not. No, I believe it makes sense to draw a line. When a person (indeed, even a specialist) claims special insight (including critical insight) of a well-examined problem he is almost always wrong. The physicist John Baez not infrequently encounters cranks who believe they've found errors in relativity theory or quantum mechanics. He has developed a scale for rating cranks: http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics/msg/5312a801e0785e66?hl=en&#38 http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics/msg/5312a801e0785e...; The OP is wrong in so many ways that it renders his article meaningless. And others have pointed out possible errors (although doing so one must interpret the OP's intentions, a risky endeavor indeed), though certainly not to exhaustion. To add a single specific item of criticism to the fray would only provide yet another handle for the OP or other misled persons to grasp and extend the discussion uselessly. The human mind can create ideas, phrases, and analogies some of which, upon further examination, are devoid of meaning. Dreaming is an extreme instance wherein most of the ideas later make no sense. However the same thing can happen while fully conscious and is part of the normal creative process. Mathematics and logic are tools we use for separating empty ideas from useful and meaningful ones. Unfortunately there is no Royal Road to mathematics or logic, nor to relational databases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road I have neither the time, nor the inclination, much less the rhetorical skill to enlighten the OP or this group as to the vagaries of databases. Nor do I view this as a "rhetorical" discussion: rhetoric is concerned with swaying the populace to your side of the argument whether you are correct or not. I am concerned about what is correct rather than what is popular. I do not doubt the enthusiasm (or frustration) of the OP, however his complaints are poorly-stated, unclear and orginate from an incomplete understanding of logic and relational databases. Many similar complaints have been stated before (often much more clearly and in a form arguable) in more appropriate venues (e.g., Google for "relational vs OOP group:comp.*"), where they have been thrashed about thoroughly by better, and worse, men than me. It is one thing to register frustration. But it is another to casually question ideas that have withstood the test of time and cast that questioning as serious. To show that frustration in the development of databases is nothing new see William Kent's "Data and Reality": http://www.amazon.com/Data-Reality-William-Kent/dp/1585009709 http://www.amazon.com/Data-Reality-William-Kent/dp/158500970...