Re: Dreaming About Redesigning SQL

"Lauri Pietarinen" <lauri(dot)pietarinen(at)atbusiness(dot)com> wrote in message
news:bmutga$jdk$1(at)nyytiset(dot)pp(dot)htv(dot)fi(dot)(dot)(dot)
> Anthony W. Youngman wrote:
>
> >Well, as far as we MV'ers are concerned, performance IS a problem with
> >the relational approach. The attitude (as far as I can tell) with
> >relational is to hide the actual DB implementation from the programmers.
> >So it is a design "flaw" that it is extremely easy for a programmer to
> >do something stupid. And you need a DBA to try and protect the database
> >from the programmers!
> >
> >As soon as a requirement for a database specifies extraction of the
> >maximum power from the box, it OUGHT to rule out all the current
> >relational databases. MV flattens it for it for performance. As an MV
> >programmer, I *KNOW* that I can find any thing I'm looking for (or find
> >out it doesn't exist) with just ONE disk seek. A relational programmer
> >has to ask the db "does this exist" and hope the db is optimised to be
> >able to return the result quickly. To quote the Pick FAQ "SQL optimises
> >the easy task of finding stuff in memory. Pick optimises the hard task
> >of getting it into memory in the first place".
> >
> So in your opinion, is the problem
>
> 1) SQL is so hard that the average programmer will not know how to use it
> efficiently
> or
> 2) Relational (or SQL-) DBMS'es are just too slow

No, I think Anthony is just saying that he doesn't "believe" in science/the
scientific method. Or maybe he believes that engineering is not based on
scientific knowledge!

> >"Think different". Think Engineering, not Maths. And for $DEITY's sake
> >stop going on about science. Unless you can use set theory to predict
> >the future, relational has nothing to do with science ...

Regards
Paul Vernon
Business Intelligence, IBM Global Services