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I think you're letting your experience of development cloud your view of what a database is. Almost every program imaginable requires one.
by donaq 16y ago
I think you're letting your experience of development cloud your view of what a database is. Almost every program imaginable requires one.
- protomyth 16y agoNo, most embedded programmers will never deal with any form of database unless you stretch the definition of database so far as to include lookup tables. I am pretty sure arrays are not databases.
- donaq 16y agoI don't need to stretch the definition for that to be included, since the definition of a database is an organised collection of data. Ephemeral or transient data is still data.
- kranner 16y agoBy that definition a JPEG file is a database.
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoBut, for example, a dictionary in python, while containing data, is not usually referred to as "A Database". It doesn't have inner-join, outer-join, left or right join, select, etc. It's data, it's not what most people would call a database.
- donaq 16y agoIt seems this has degraded into an argument about semantics. When I learned the term in school, it was not synonymous with RDBMSes. When I was trying to learn lisp from the book Practical Common Lisp, there was a chapter containing an example where one went about building a database that resided in memory for the duration of the program's run. At my current job, the app I am writing processes a collection of csv files which my colleagues and I refer to as a database. I don't think the term "database" should be conflated with "database management system", much less a "relational database management system". I mean, nowadays there are so many different types of databases out there other than those (loosely) based on relational algebra.
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoThe comment that started this discussion was here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1829481 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1829481 in which it was said: > Yes, there are people out there who ... have never > heard of an inner join. We call them bad programmers. You said: > ... the definition of a database is an organised > collection of data. Ephemeral or transient data is > still data. That's not the point. Your sense of "a database" being "an organised collection of data" is actually more commonly (in my experience) referred to as "a data structure." Usually it's not "a database" until it gets some sort of query language or manipulation primitives. Yes, people refer to a collection of data as "a database," but I return to my original objection to the original comment requiring that not being a bad programmer requires that you know about inner-joins. As I said earlier, we have, to some extent, been talking past each other.
- NickPollard 16y agoWhilst I would mostly agree with that, the general modern definition of database has grown out of the common form of the popular varieties. I don't think that something has to have inner-join, select, etc. to be a database, it's just that the most common do. Similarly I don't think something has to have 4 wheels, an internal combustion engine and a sunroof to be car - it's just that most of them do.
- nocman 16y agoUgh. Having horrible flashbacks here. :-D I once worked for a company that had a version control system where they checked in all the data by project. You could go in an see the history of a project by reviewing the documents (emails, spreadsheets, CSV files, etc) or binary data files that were associated with the project. At the time for checking something in, you were asked to classify the data being checked in. You had options like "Document", "Text file", "Spreadsheet", and one of the options was "Database". Much to the dismay of the programmers who had to deal with the data, users insisted on checking in spreadsheets and CSV files and classifying them as "Database". No form of rational discussion would persuade the users to classify the documents correctly (like I said, there were classifications that covered Spreadsheet/CSV directly). In their mind, a spreadsheet was a database, and it was just stupid that the programmers insisted that it was not. In the end, the programmers just gave up trying to persuade them, and we just grumbled to ourselves every time we came across it.
- metageek 16y agoNo, that's a data structure.
- mfukar 16y agoFiles are not databases.