Fabian Pascal Reacts

Kardamon writes "Fabian Pascal reacts on the recent Slashdot discussion about SQL, XML, and the Relational Database Model, both on DBAzine and on his own web site Database Debunkings. An Open Source implementation of his ideas and those of C.J. Date and Hugh Darwen is REL."

Comments

Re:Nice Decorum

[Anonymous Coward]

"443 comments ... Such volume is usually indicative of hot air... crapola"

This is Slashdot after all. I heard that *BSD is dying too.

Fabian's first error:

[k98sven]

Assuming that a Slashdot 'debate' actually is one.

Re:Fabian's first error:

[baadfood]

This post isn't funny. I mean what? This guy actually thinks that he needs to defend himself against posts made by ignoramuses on Slashdot? Given my distruct of both XML and SQL - hell anything that doesnt have a nice binary API - I was quite willing to belive him, but this bizarre behaviour has made me categorize him firmly as a loon.

Re:Fabian's first error:

[blake8087]

He comes off like a big baby in his article.

Why does he stress himself?

[iota]

Okay Fabian needs to relax. Take a deep breath! He made two fundamental mistakes which probably cost him to waste time he could have spent on something more productive, or at least personally gratifying... (Although bitching about Slashdot posts can be gratifying, I suppose.)

1. He took Slashdot comments personally. This is something we see all the time. Let this serve as /another/ warning to all future Slashdotees -- People hidden behind anonymity, even experienced onces, like drivers, will forget that there are real people on the other side of the conversation.

2. He treats Slashdot comments as well-thought responses to his articles. For Pete's sake come on! This is the place where professionals, interested parties, and random wannabes can foam at the mouth and say the first thing that comes to mind. Hell man, comments are moderated by popular vote! This is not exactly a medium of high academic quality. And that's just fine. Sometimes first impressions are what you want, sometimes they're complete BS, but they only give you an insight in to where some people would /start/ thinking about a problem, not where they would end up after careful consideration after research and practice.

In the end Fabian, you're probably gonna get flamed for your response as well. If you want it for the intention, cool. If not you should probably just let it go...

Re:Why does he stress himself?

[wolenczak]

Can you mod troll/flamebait a whole article?

Re:Why does he stress himself?

[Unordained]

It's just who he is. Fabian Pascal, Chris Date, Hugh Darwen, and even sometimes Joe Celko (though the rest would likely never admit to it) have good ideas most of the time. But that's the purely academic part of who they are. Fabian reacts hotly to just about anything. Most of his posts on db-debunk are cynical in nature, with little else to offer. When I've tried to get useful clarification out of him, all I got was "read my book, I write so I only have to say anything once." After buying it and reading it thoroughly, I found I still had a question, because he seemed to contradict himself. His answer was, to paraphrase, "I can't convince you if you don't already believe." What a sad answer from an author whose book you're reading, and even worse from someone steeped in "truth", "proof", "logical correctness" and the like!

Communication is breaking down between those who are pretty sure they have a clue, and the rest, and it's not (as they seem to think) entirely the fault of those not in the know. They've given up, they feel they have no reason to try to teach anymore, and that's that. What's worse, there are very few people trying to push their ideas, so when they turn to cynicism, it reflects on their academic work as well. As suggested by Fabian's comments about usernames vs. 'real-world' names, it's hard to divorce the person pushing an idea from the idea itself. But we need to!

There's some good stuff in "the third manifesto", and more to be done. I'm saddened that part of the book is based on what they feel is obvious/established, and part of it is conjecture, but on the whole it presents a fresh look at a not-quite-old-yet idea. We should build on the shoulders of those who came before us, even if they've given up all hope. I hope the slashdot crowd won't give up on this group of researchers just because they can become hot-headed, stubborn, or even flat-out bitter. We've got work to do.

Re:Why does he stress himself?

[kfg]

1. He took Slashdot comments personally.

No, not really. What he did was point out Slashdot comments that were personal and noted that these represented the majority.

Sometimes I too find myself getting tired of explaining the difference between "You're stupid" and "Your idea is stupid" just to try to have a meaningful exchange. It's particularly bothersome when the other person is in a position where knowledge of that difference legitimately ought to be assumed.

2. He treats Slashdot comments as well-thought responses to his articles. For Pete's sake come on! This is the place where professionals, interested parties, and random wannabes can foam at the mouth and say the first thing that comes to mind.

Not really. In fact what he does is point out that they aren't, even where the person posting purports to be a professional, even after making a concerted effort to find such in response to someone else making the claim that well thought out responses could be found here.

KFG

Re:Why does he stress himself?

[Tragek]

1. See John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad theory.
2. Yup. We slashdotters think off the top of our heads!

Re:Why does he stress himself?

[Forbman]

...it seems like the researchers have forgotton the "simple" part of SQL.

I guess they've decided that it's time to cut off the face to spite the nose with SQL. Instead of fixing or improving SQL, they want to get rid of it, because it's not "pure enough"?

Doesn't make sense. SQL works good enough.

At least with OCL, it is almost possible to map it in my mind to something I know well.

Re:Why does he stress himself?

[Brandybuck]

Hell man, comments are moderated by popular vote!

Far from it. Despite what Slashdot editors may tell you, many people have been barred from moderating without cause. I myself have not been given the opportunity to moderate in over a year, despite a high karma and regular metamoderation.

Re:Why does he stress himself?

[Unordained]

"SQL" didn't stand for anything at first, and now has several meanings of which 'simple' is one, 'structured' is another, etc. And if you use SQL a lot, you can find that it's anything but simple, particularly when it doesn't natively do what you need it to do. A few paragraphs of ugly joins, sub-queries, NULL-handling, and temp tables later, and you begin to realize that what you're doing could probably be done more easily by the server, if only it knew what you wanted -- but your language doesn't allow you to accurately express what you actually want, limiting you to a simple vocabulary.

There's a point at which you stop fixing something up, and just go ahead and replace it. Mistakes happen. Some of these guys were involved in the SQL specs the first time around, it's not like they never wanted to have anything to do with it.

As far as they're concerned, it's like a bunch of people thinking that math goes as far as their 4-function calculator, which is "good enough" for them. It is good enough, yes, for some people, but others want much more, and want a good way to express what they want. Symbolic math, symbolic relational operations, it's all the same idea. (Relational databases are firmly grounded in mathematics, it's not a stretch at all to use this simile.) The new language they propose (as an example only, not as a final product) isn't particularly hard to read and understand, but is much more expressive when you need it to be. You can do 6*8 using nothing but the '6', '8', and '+' keys, but wouldn't it be easier if they just gave you a '*' key, and while they're at it, made it easier to extend your calculator for new operators too?

There's a good whole chapter in "the third manifesto" concerned with mapping the current SQL language to the "D" language they propose; they don't want to force you to switch over without some time to learn, and they'd like to keep existing applications working on new server software as much as possible. Yes, they want to replace SQL, but want to give you a migration plan too. (Note, however, that the cost of using this SQL translation feature would be the same, more or less, as trying to switch to a different dbms vendor -- not all SQL is the same! Identical syntax can even give you different results on different servers!)

Re:Why does he stress himself?

[HiThere]

SQL is very bad. It's just better than the working alternatives.

I don't really think that SQL can be improved into something good, only into something better. I'm not about to cast aspersions on someone who's trying to do something good, rather than just improve on the current mess.

N.B.: I'm no SQL guru. I use it when and as I must. And I find it in many ways terrible, but especially when I try to map it onto an object class. BLOBs are essentially giving up on the hope of getting SQL to work as you need it to, and saying "You define the keys separately, you parse the data, you figure out how to tell what it's similar to. I give up." That said, they're an immense improvement on NOT having blobs. At least you can marshall or pickel a bunch of data together, and save it without needing to convert it all into a string.

Whether you find SQL to work well enough depends drastically on what you are doing.

N.B.: I didn't really examine his paper, I just looked it over. I'm only critiquing your comment. I did look far enough to tell that the current implementation is:
1) Only intended for tutorial use
2) Based on a SleepyCat BSDdb data engine
3) Written in Java

So I know that it won't meet my needs. I didn't follow his critique on what changes he had made from SQL, because I already knew that the product would only be useful if I wanted to rewrite everything from scratch...and I want to avoid that particular step.

Re:Why does he stress himself?

[iota]

Sorry, you're right. I forgot:

3. Slashdot comments are not always entirely accurate.

Courage of their Convictions?

[grylnsmn]

I stopped reading and only skimmed the article after I read this:

Note: Participants in the thread use aliases rather than real names. So much for the courage of their convictions.

I'm sorry, but the use of an alias or username doesn't say anything about the "courage of their convictions". It is a common practice to use an account name, if only to provide a unique identifier for a user.

For example, I've done a search on Google for my own name, and found that there are several other people in the US who share my name. One is a preacher in Florida. Another is a lawyer in Pennsylvania. I don't even have all that common of a name.

What about my cousin, named David Evans? Evans is a common last name (at least for those of Welsh extraction), and david isn't exactly a rare first name. How many "David Evans" might post at a site as popular as Slashdot?

I'm sorry, but to dismiss someone (and their arguments) as cowardly because they use a screen name or user account is to ignore the substance of their remarks. If he were really interested in accepting constructive criticism and improving his ideas, he would not be ridiculing those who comment on them.

Re:Courage of their Convictions?

[jackb_guppy]

Shoot he should understand an alias! What is really an userid in a database, huh? ;-o

PS: Database Debunk... I do not see debunking, just pushing to buy a book or two.

Re:Courage of their Convictions?

[bladernr]

I'm sorry, but to dismiss someone (and their arguments) as cowardly because they use a screen name or user account is to ignore the substance of their remarks.

Is he entirely wrong? Hiding behind the screen name - and I do hide, you will not find my real name, address, and phone number in my /. journal - removes some accountability. As soon as you remove accountability, people will do and say things they wouldn't if they were accountable.

I do write articles in print media under my real name. I check facts, think things through, cite sources, interview experts, and all the other sorts of things you do when your reputation is on the line (accountability). During the course of this research, I discover that I don't know everything, and the quality of the articles is much higher because of the research (and the research happens to a large extent because of accountability).

Now, here on Slashdot, I am free to say whatever comes to mind, as we all are. How many things have been stated as absolute fact that a quick bit of research would show are false? How many people would shoot off at the mouth with so little thought if the comments would be associated with them, personally, throughout their life?

Being able to speak anonyously is a good thing for political reasons (dissonants in China and the Middle East don't enjoy the same freedoms we do in the West, so I don't fault them for remaining anonymous or using aliases in commentary). However, any time someone is speaking anonymously, what's wrong with being a bit more suspicious of what they say?

Re:Courage of their Convictions?

[grylnsmn]

Now, here on Slashdot, I am free to say whatever comes to mind, as we all are. How many things have been stated as absolute fact that a quick bit of research would show are false? How many people would shoot off at the mouth with so little thought if the comments would be associated with them, personally, throughout their life?

How many print articles contain inaccurate information as well? One example comes from this past week, where the AP reported that the crowed "booed" when Bush made remarks about Clinton being in the hospital. In reality, the crowd cheered Bush's well-wishing.

Dismissing someone as a coward because they use a pseudonym, is a major fallacy. The name a person uses does not change the content of their remarks, nor the validity.

Re:Courage of their Convictions?

[GeoGreg]

Exactly right. Anonymous writings can even sometimes be more effective that signed writings because you are not reading them with some preconceived notion of who the author is and what his/her biases are. However, this only holds as long as the piece sticks to independently verifiable evidence and reasoned argument. Anonymous allegations with no proof or simple personal invective may be safely ignored. But simply dismissing one's opponent solely on the basis of anonymity (or, more often at Slashdot pseduonymity) is just lazy. Note: I am not a database expert, and I have no particular knowledge of the issues in this debate. But you'll just have to trust me on that ;)

Re:Courage of their Convictions?

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent wasn't saying that anonymity is bad.

The parent comment was saying that an anonymous comment shouldn't be ridiculed simply because its an anonymous one.

The parent comment was also saying that a comment from a person with a screen-name that doesn't reveal who the person is shouldn't be ridiculed simply because the identity of the person who made it can't be discovered.

It's one thing to be able to speak anonymously.
It's an entirely different thing to be called dumb/stupid/coward/not-worth-responding-to simply because a screen-name is used.

Re:Courage of their Convictions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Anonymous posters make it hard to form ad hominem attacks against them.

Re:Courage of their Convictions?

[HiThere]

Another example? Every single time I've been able to check on a media story they've either lied, gotten it wrong, or so distorted the event that I didn't recognize it (without significant effort, as in "I was in the same area at the same time, so they must be talking about the same thing").

Also, authors regularlly use their position of relative power/invulnerability to expound positions that they would never dare in front of a hostile crowd (to be fair, some of them WOULD dare, and became authors out of a sense of self protection...better to distance yourself! One example is [or was, he may have mellowed in the last few decades] Harlan Ellison).

Re:Courage of their Convictions?

[HiThere]

And you left out a comma. So?
That (some) people are more abusive (though I take your point as humorous) when they feel invulnerable is one of the facts of human nature. It's so common it's been the subject of short stories and cartoons...it may well have been the subject of novels, but unless one counts things like 1984, I don't read that genre.

This is, in fact, sufficiently true that I redefine it as "the root of all evil", replacing money which is only a surrogate for invulnerability. (I.e., if you have enough money, you can buy yourself a large amount of invulnerability.)

I would go further, that when & where people feel invulnerable, in those places they allow their desires and prejudices to lead them into immoral acts. I am intentionally ignoring illegal acts here, since if they aren't immoral, I no longer disapprove of them. A cynically corrupt government has spent it's "moral high ground" capital. Still, there are definitely many illegal acts I don't perform because I fear consequences. "The game is not worth the candle." And this is definitely a related effect.

To clarify, I define an immoral act to be one which does someone else sufficient damage that if they had reasonable opportunity they would damage you. (Naturally this means that one must thing in gradations of immorality, as it's impossible to even live without making someone wish you harm. Details are left, however "as an exercise for the student". There's no right answer, but there are lots of wrong ones. So try to avoid those.)

Re:Courage of their Convictions?

[Master of Transhuman]

Bottom Line: he signs his name to his opinions.

"Anonymous Cowards" don't - that's why they are labeled "Anonymous Cowards", right?

I use a handle - and put my name at the bottom.

"Anonymous Cowards" can't, apparently.

Re:Courage of their Convictions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, the US's founding fathers who drafted the constitution did much of their writing under pen-names instead of their own.

They were not cowards.

I have read the article

[mondoterrifico]

and can summarize it for you.
He basically makes the point that everyone on slashdot is a clueless twit.
A very wise man indeed. :)

Re:I have read the article

[Axem]

I don't think you need to be wise to find that out.

Re:I have read the article

[mabu]

Ironically, let's summarize for those herein who won't RTFA...

What is really astounding is not just the almost total lack of knowledge by practitioners, experts, and even academics, of the history and foundation of their own field (which does not stop them from making broad pronouncements; they even boast about it; Unskilled and Unaware of It indeed). Rather, it's also the lack of most basic reasoning ability--confusion, vagueness, inconsistency and a total disregard for evidence. In my writings I at least strive to be logical, and back arguments with either direct evidence, or references to sources (the reader is invited to judge to what extent I succeeded in my article under consideration). Yet in the whole Slashdot exchange the reasoning and evidence for my arguments are thoroughly ignored, while nothing resembling such is offered for opposing arguments. Yet I am the one accused of unsubstantiated claims. Poor reasoning in a field founded on logic is scary, and it sure provides yet another reason why the relational model has not been properly appreciated in the industry.

Re:I have read the article

[Anonymous Coward]

"He basically makes the point that everyone on slashdot is a clueless twit."

so, nothing new in that article, huh?

Re:I have read the article

[gfim]

I got as far as reading that paragraph, and the one where he says:

One does not know whether to laugh or cry. It has been quite obvious that the designers of SQL had little understanding of data fundamentals in general, and the relational model in particular; and SQL was hardly developed in accordance with good language design principles. If there were any doubts about that to this point, XML and XQuery make it perfectly clear that things are becoming worse, not better. It is not the seriousness with which XQuery specifications were undertaken that is in question here, but rather that of the knowledge and understanding of the specifiers, given that they are vendors.

I have great difficulty resolving those two! Where are his 'direct evidence' and 'refererences to sources'?

Graham

Politics and Programming

[toupsie]

Unlike chocolate and peanut butter, these are two things do not go together. Nothing destroys a really good technical discussion than an introductory quote of Chomsky. I don't care if you love Reagan or Kennedy gets you feeling all squiggly inside, its just wrong. Plain wrong. Stick with the tech you know and keep it away from what you think is the right political belief.

also ignore my .sig

Re:Politics and Programming

[loqi]

While it's not relevant to this particular instance, Chomsky has contributed to the field (i.e., the Chomsky hierarchy), and in some cases quoting him would be appropriate in a "really good technical discussion."

Re:Politics and Programming

[mondoterrifico]

The quote has almost nothing to do with politics and everything to do with how ideology filters out objectivity.
A very apropos quote in my opinion, and it kind of makes your comment ironic to boot. :)

Re:Politics and Programming

[Anonymous Coward]

A very apropos quote in my opinion, and it kind of makes your comment ironic to boot. :)

Not to mention the +5 insightful it garnered.

Re:Politics and Programming

[venomkid]

Yeah, nevermind that Chomsky is also a world reknowned logician and linguist.

Blah blah something about babies and bathwater...

Re:Politics and Programming

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, chocolate and peanut butter DON'T go together ...

Re:Politics and Programming

[mefus]

Chomsky's influence on, say D.E. Knuth for example, and Computer Science in general, is well-known.

Chomsky is evidently way bigger than you think.

Fabian's Good Move

[Anonymous Coward]

By starting article with a quote from Chomsky, he warns off the thinking man not to even bother reading on.

Skills

[unlocked]

Mr. Pascal seems to be quite the cunning-linguist.

Re:Skills

[Anonymous Coward]

A real master debater.

Re:Skills

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, he is truly a master debater

Don't underestimate optimizations

[Ars-Fartsica]

Oracle et al have spent decades optimizing their products for SQL as they implement it. The chances of a better designed syntax resulting in a faster database is slim. I don't give REL or any other SQL++ contender much chance at this point, if even on the legacy argument alone.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[DogDude]

I agree. People are trying to re-invent the wheel without knowing that the wheel even exists yet. When I read articles about an XML query language, I just have to shake my head and laugh. If most developers understood RDBMS', we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. It quite possible to create a product that would "out-perform" Oracle if that was the only criteria. The management system that supports a database product is just as important.

SQL has many flaws that are inherent in the language, and those flaws can manifest themselves as bugs. SQL is an old language, just like C. Unfortunately vendors make money by selling backward compatability, XML capabilities etc.

I think Pascal's point is that (1) many people are ignorant (not even aware of the problems) and proud of it (no surprise there) , (2) group-think, commercial pressures etc conspire against products like REL (no surprise there).

I think Open Source has a great role to play in these situations - it is not as succeptable to many of those pressures (but may have it's own ideologies) ;-)

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[Ars-Fartsica]

Not true. It quite possible to create a product that would "out-perform" Oracle if that was the only criteria.

If you think you can build a product that meets all of the requirements that Oracle does, yet performs better in the average case...well, I call BS. Don't respond with MySQL performing better because by admission MySQL does not meet the same requirements as Oracle.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[lfourrier]

Oracle et al have spent decades optimizing their products for SQL as they implement it

SQL should not be "as implemented by x or y". And decades of optimization is perhaps not the best. Decades ago, RAM was much more costly. Datatype where usually much poorer(even if I have problem with the principle ofBLOBs).

Premature optimization is the root of all evil (it's not from me ;). Sound mathematical principles, without shortcuts and exceptions, seem much more interresting in the long run.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[wfberg]

kx have an interesting product.. 10-100x as fast as you "legacy " database, by which they mean oracle et al of course, and specialized for time-series (which is a big deal if you deal with those).

I don't think oracle is quite the fastest general-purpose SQL(semi)compliant RDBMS there is - it trades speed in favor of integrity.

Also, if databases were ueber-efficient at executing SQL queries, there'd be no great need to use server side stored procedures to speed things up.

And, last time I checked, google didn't run oracle, and for a reason.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[DaveVoorhis]

The goal of better syntax is not faster databases. Run time performance is not always the primary aim. The goal of better syntax is faster, easier, and more reliable development, and provably (within reason) correct data management code. For the PHB, that means cheaper development and maintenance.

As for "REL [sic] or any other SQL++ contender" not having much chance, you're right. But I remember when "not much chance" was the typical response of IT directors when asked if they'd ever give up greenscreen mainframe terminals and adopt PCs. The same will always be said about programming languages, too. Entrenched languages do get displaced. For example, how many shiny new applications are being written in FORTRAN?

Anyway, I see nothing wrong with retaining SQL as a protocol for communicating with legacy databases, especially if the SQL code is machine-generated. The external database connection facilities I'm developing for Rel use SQL in this manner. But, just as I'm not sending email by hand-coding SMTP transactions, and not writing complex GUIs in assembly language, I'd rather not develop database applications using SQL. It's simply not an efficient language for writing complex apps.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[stefanb]

The chances of a better designed syntax resulting in a faster database is slim.

That is most certainly wrong: by using a more expressive syntax, you are able to convey more exactly what it is you are requesting, and thereby enable the database to optimize better.

Case in point: hierarchical relations. (Standard) SQL does not allow you to retrieve a list of nodes in a tree, so you have to emulate that query by issuing multiple queries in your application, in some stored procedure, etc. If SQL had proper support for relationships like that, the database could tell what you're requesting, and optimize the query.

Proper support is also key: while Oracle does support the CONNECT BY mechanism, it's only a kludge. For example, you can't order the result set so that siblings are ordered in a specific way while still preserving the tree structure. There are work-arounds for all of these issues, but direct, proper support in the language would still go a long way.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[Ars-Fartsica]

I don't think oracle is quite the fastest general-purpose SQL(semi)compliant RDBMS there is - it trades speed in favor of integrity.

According to some TPC benchmarks, Oracle is in fact the fastest.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[Ars-Fartsica]

That is most certainly wrong: by using a more expressive syntax, you are able to convey more exactly what it is you are requesting, and thereby enable the database to optimize better.

But any company going this route would have to basically start over again and forsake the decades+ optimization made to the current model. I doubt they would be able to produce a better performing product, although I grant you this is a conjecture.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[wintermute42]

In in the last stages of a project that implemented a graph based query language for a graph that is implemented by an Oracle database. Our query language eventually results in some large SQL statements and on occasion the Oracle optimizer does pretty poorly at executing these queries. My colleague, who is an Oracle expert, has added a large number of "hints" to get the optimizer to do "the right thing". These "hints" can result in a factor of ten reduction in query time.

Lots of work undoubtedly has gone into the Oracle optimizer, but it is not obvious that a language that translates better into the relational model might not do better than SQL does currently.

A stronger argument for why REL will probably go nowhere is that lots of people (like my colleague) have spent a lot of time mastering SQL. And SQL is relatively portable (as long as one avoids extensions as much as possible).

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[DaveVoorhis]

You're both wrong. Optimisation is not dependent on syntax, it is ultimately dependent on the semantics encoded in the syntax. The same semantics (say, that of the relational model) may be expressed in innumerable languages. Obviously, some of these languages will be more expressive than others, but all (in theory) will result in the same run time performance. They will not, however, result in the same developer performance or ease of maintenance.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[wfberg]

I don't think oracle is quite the fastest general-purpose SQL(semi)compliant RDBMS there is - it trades speed in favor of integrity.

According to some TPC benchmarks, Oracle is in fact the fastest.

Benchmarks, schmenchmarks. Does Oracle's license even permit publishing your own benchmarks?

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[Forbman]

You can use left-right trees to do hierarchies quite well in SQL, and query them quite efficiently, both up and down the tree, as well as across the tree.

The main drawbacks, at least in current RDBMS, is updating the tree table as new nodes are added. Adding the nodes isn't the problem, incrementing node "pointer" values gets expensive.

Oh, and a lack of native support in SQL for them means you're writing stored procs and triggers to maintain them.

Joe Celko talks well about L-R trees in SQL in the "DBMS Magazine" archives.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[Anonymous Coward]

AF: Can you read English? I'm saying the same thing. I said that you could out-perform Oracle if that was the only criteria. You then get a rating 2! Sigh.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of shiny new applications are being written
infortran - esp fortran 95 - and soon fortan 2000
and then fortran 2005 (or whatever the next will
be). fortan is not the punch card oriented language
it once was. lost of science and engineering codes
continue to be written in fortran

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't give REL or any other SQL++ contender much chance at this point

I think the REL page makes that argument for itself anyway:

The Rel server is constructed from [...] a simple stack-based virtual machine, implemented in Java

Yeah, uh, they're looking to outperform Oracle before 2020.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[lostguy]

To clarify your statement, are you saying that, because you can bodge your RDBMS into returning hierarchically-structured information, there is no reason to look for a more domain-specific abstraction?

Why use one line of code when you can use 20, that kind of thing?

Just checking.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[DogDude]

No. RDBMS & standard SQL are flexible enough to return data in any form you need, without having to invent a highly inflexible widget for various *kinds* of data. Using one tool is cheaper, more secure, more stable, and faster. RDBMS and SQL have been doing this and much, much more for years. Hierarchical data is just a tiny subset of ways that you can manage data with a traditional RDBMS and SQL. People who are not inclined to understand databases think that they're somehow antiquated because they don't have a "SELECT HIERARCHICAL" method or some such nonsense, so they think that you need another tool to do it with. It's already in place and functioning well. You just have to learn how to use it properly.

Re:Don't underestimate optimizations

[lostguy]

There are reasons people have invented R/H/MOLAP systems, OR bridges, and the like -- it's unwieldy and often grossly inefficient to use SQL92 variants and normal RDBMS to solve some problems.

And no, it's not faster, cheaper, or more stable to do most useful OLAP or OR problems in RDBMS/SQL without an additional tool.

Your argument is pretty naive, so I'm guessing you also think any Turing language is as useful as the next.

I agree

[DogDude]

While this "article" is rambling, and realtively incoherent, I will agree with him on one thing: the average Slashdot user knows *nothing* about data. Any time a database discussion crops up, every PHP and PERL hack comes out of the woorkwork describing the wonderful spped at which MySQL handles a "select *" query. I personally feel that any database that is large enough or complex enough to have a DBA should limit access to it to only people who have had a basic "what is a database" class that explains what a relational database is, how it works, the basic history behind it, and specific basics such as stored procedures, triggers, views, foreign keys, etc. I can't begin to count the number of completely ignorant postings I've seen on /. regarding data. Hell, most people treat the database as an afterthought when designing an application, when, in reality, it should almost always be the *first* consideration.

Re:I agree

[thejuggler]

Hell, most people treat the database as an afterthought when designing an application, when, in reality, it should almost always be the *first* consideration.

My boss being one of those that can't understand data. Even though I did not finish college, I did at least finish my database classes. When designing a data driven web site I always study the data that is to be stored before anything else. What most programmers forget is that these web sites are *DATA* driven. Without good, clearly organized data the rest falls apart.

SELECT * FROM slashdot_users WHERE clue = 0;
error: return set to large

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

the average Slashdot user knows *nothing* about data.

This is true of cryptography as well. I expect it is true of many subjects.

Re:I agree

[DissidentHere]

Hell, most people treat the database as an afterthought when designing an application, when, in reality, it should almost always be the *first* consideration.

Right on. The database is the foundation. Poor choices in your database design can result in terrible complications when you attempt to support, maintain or upgrade an application. If you build a house on a shitty, out of shape foundation, how long do you think the house will stand? How easy will it be to add on to the house?

MS Access is the worst thing to happen to database software. It makes people think 'this database thing is easy' and you end up with horribly ugly 'database' applications that get ingrained in departments/organizations.

Your database is the foundation. Its what you build an application on, thus it is important. I don't always agree with Fabian, but at least he's talking about it, raising questions, and keeping DB design in our minds.

It doesn't matter if we agree with a particular 'database scientist' what matters is that we think about DB design. I love the theory, but in reality, sometimes the best choice is to break the rules. But, and this is a big but, breaking the rules should be done thoughtfully, and when no other options present themselves.

Re:I agree

[Bill Dog]

Wow, I'm always amazed, as often as it occurs, when I run into someone who actually feels that if they know little/nothing about something it must be simple/easy. As if knowing nothing and yet being able to get something working (loosely-defined) means that there isn't or shouldn't be any more to it. To me that's actually what makes a boss a PHB.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Awww, sorry I touched a sore spot. I guess I should be more sensitive to you DB "Admins". The fact is databases exist to store data, and retrieve data based on queries. This is a very simple concept. The vast majority of databases are used to handle queries like "Give me patient record of a patient with the name Fred Jones", or "Give me a list of books that are not currently in stock". It certainly isn't rocket science, and arguing over such issues as if SQL is a *TRUE* RDBMS language serves zero purpose in that context. Unfortunately it is almost always the case that people who devote a large amount of time and energy to a particular subject consider it to be of utmost importance and complexity. The more narrow the field, the more important and complex it is. Get over yourself.

This guy constantly harps on how the West is declining in education, yet spends his time researching DATABASE theory. Does that not strike anyone else as ridiculous? Shouldn't someone with such vast and superior intellect as he says he has do something more worthwhile?

According to his writings, apparently only Asia is the saviour of mankind, because of their superior educational system (please note he was educated in the U.S. and sucked off the teat of the American educational system for years). It is odd to see that, according to his schedule of events, he is only giving seminars in the West. Perhaps he is right - Asia really is smarter!

Re:I agree

[Bill Dog]

Awww, sorry I touched a sore spot.

Hmm, sorry that I touched a sore spot -- I was in no way defending messiur Pascal, or the guarding of data by high priests in white towers. I was just trying to allude to there being folly in the opposite extreme as well.

I guess I should be more sensitive to you DB "Admins".

I'm a software engineer, and only know a middling amount about db's (i.e. enough to know that there's a lot I don't), but yes, I guess you should.

Re:I agree

[metamatic]

Hell, most people treat the database as an afterthought when designing an application, when, in reality, it should almost always be the *first* consideration.

Actually, the problem domain and user requirements should be the first consideration. You shouldn't even think about the database until you have a domain model...

Another summary

[pubjames]

I also read the article. My summary is as follows:

Fabian Pascal is a twit.

In Soviet Russia...

[Espectr0]

...Trotsky reads you! Really, this time it is on topic.

I find highly interesting what he says about the soviet goverment and u.s capitalism.

What struck me after living in the US for a while, was the similarity, at a very fundamental level, between the US and Soviet systems: while the means by which they attain their objectives differ, the objectives themselves are, for all practical purposes, the same: control and exploitation of the public. Both systems indoctrinate with propaganda from childhood.

But because the Soviet system had coercion at its disposal, the propaganda did not need to be convincing: if you stepped out of line, the government came hard after you. That's why propaganda could be blatant and absurd, and the public was fully aware of it and did not believe it, only pretended to. That is also one reason why the Soviet system collapsed.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[calidoscope]

From TFA: What struck me after living in the US for a while, was the similarity, at a very fundamental level, between the US and Soviet systems: while the means by which they attain their objectives differ, the objectives themselves are, for all practical purposes, the same: control and exploitation of the public. Both systems indoctrinate with propaganda from childhood.

The one difference is that the "control" in the US is usually less centralized and the source of control shifts with time.

If you really want to find out about abuses in propaganda, google on George Creel - who probably picked up a few lessons from William Randolph Hearst's conduct just prior to the Spanish American War. I wouldn't be surprised if the Soviets picked up a few tidbits from Creel's work.

It is also interesting that Pascal did not mention Orwell's 1984 which is the classic description of propaganda in action. That story is becoming especially spooky with reports of the UK having the largest scale deployment of public surveillance cameras.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Forbman]

...but every family, clan, region, country, etc. is like this.

So it's a red herring.

Re:Nice Decorum

[(ars)lyme]

Like most around here I do not reply to news articles often, however the passion of Mr Pascal really has forced me to. Sadly Mr Pascal really does not understand how the medium of /. really works. Before being linked to by /. Mr Pascal doesn't realize that for most of the IT population he was like the rest of us, and probably will end up like that again.. Nobody of importance except in our own minds. As well given the traffic of /. we all realize that he also only received a minor interest compared to many many other posts which received a huge amount of response compared to the piddly 443 replies. What is worse is that while he preaches his background living through harder times than the rest of us, and relying on his univeristy training making him smarter than the rest of us. He writes or claims to write works of constructive critisim and yet cannot respond to a critique of his work other than paultry name calling (paraphrase)'your all idiots!!' It is easy as I've shown to critise someone/something, it is difficult to provide suggestions of improvement. May I suggest that before you start name calling you consider how your overly defensive behavior has tarnished your name. /. writes what it writes, virtually unmoderated, no propiganda involved. If your bringing something to the table, consider yourself marginalized.

Seriously, it wasn't an argument anyways...

[Vthornheart]

When someone calls you a Communist in a dismissive manner on a bulletin board, that signifies that you have won the argument. It's a variant of the classic "Comparison to Nazis/Hitler" BBS rule. The people arguing against Paschal unleashed the dirty C word on him as their defense, hence they lost the argument. There's no need to defend yourself against it! =)

Re:Seriously, it wasn't an argument anyways...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that's as funny as Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but it isn't. No joke here. Just truth. You should have your geek license revoked for not knowing Godwin's Law. Now go back to your hole.

Nonsense!

[eniu!uine]

Politics + Programming = GNU

It is the perfect combination. Politics and Sex on the other hand... baaad combination.

Re:Nonsense!

[WWWWolf]

But that's different. GNU is about politics of programming and software distribution. In my view, the GNU people have an extremely valid reason to argue about the politics.

However, if you try to twist a completely unrelated political angle into the thing... well, that's just silly.

Re:Nonsense!

[Anonymous Coward]

Programming and sex, to make the triangle complete, is just non-existant.

Re:Nonsense!

[blue trane]

until we get virtual sex!

Re:Nonsense!

[mtadd]

Unless, of course, you're the politician, a priori.

Re:Nonsense!

[mewphobia]

unless you're a politician.

Re:Nonsense!

[Anonymous Coward]

Politics + Programming = GNU Politics + Sex = Kenneth Star Programming + Sex = matchmaking based on Census2000 data

So what?

[ljavelin]

Heck, everyone knows that SQL was a mistake and that XML was an even bigger mistake. Merging the two seems like compounding both mistakes.

And, at the same time, most of us know that SQL and XML are pretty good at something, and it'll be a long while before someone develops a compelling alternative.

So the news here is that Fabian Pascal doesn't like some ideas, and to be honest, I don't like some ideas too. He doesn't have to provide alternatives to unloved ideas. I think that's OK.

I worked with a woman who was damned sure that she was going to store a copy of my relational database (Postgres) in her XML database. It sounded like a bad technical idea. I didn't like it, and I expressed that I didn't like it without proposing an alternative that would work with her application. Isn't that OK?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, everyone knows that SQL was a mistake

Well I didn't know that. So I went to the referenced web site and read a lot of "writings" by Fabian Pascal and Chris Date, in an attempt to find out why SQL is so bad. I didn't find out. The web site puffs a lot of their books. But if SQL is such a big "mistake", it should be possible to explain clearly and briefly (to someone thoroughly familiar with relational database concepts) in what way it is bad.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this:

- it poorly supports the relational model
- it is inconsistent
- it doesn't promote a single standard

I'm not saying that SQL is evil. I'm just saying it's far from optimal. Even it's predecessor (from which it is named) was much more consistent and worked well with the model.

Poor Fabian

[RWerp]

I was born in one of the harshest members of the Soviet bloc and lived?if you can call that living--there until I was 13. When emigration was permitted, anybody who could, fled, including our large and close extended family. We scattered all over the world and lost contact and everything we had.

Poor him. Just because he lived in communist country (I could imagine worse than that, say -- Poland under NAZI occupation), doesn't mean he has to be right in a technical question. Why does he bring this up at the beginning of the article? To make people pity him?

I mention this to point out that because I actually lived in a communist state, and studied politics, I have a better understanding of social systems in general

Utter bullshit. First of all, a 13 year old (he left his country -- why aren't we informed which country it was? he pictures his opression so strongly that one thinks it may have been Albania, or North Korea -- at that age) rarely grasps all details of the social system he lives in, unless the times are so harsh that he grows up faster. As exhibit A (cited above) shows, Fabian didn't grow up especially fast, to put it mildly. Secondly, just living in a socialist country does not make you smarter in terms of political and social systems. It may only make you more aware of the inefficiences of the socialism, but certainly does not make you more prepared to discussing social systems in general than living in a capitalist country.

Re:Poor Fabian

[melgeroth]

Not necessarily true. As someone who lives in China, I can tell you that most of the horror stories people hear about the 'evil commies' are wildly out of context. And I easily roll my eyes at all the American's who run around talking about the "freedom" they have.

Granted that at higher levels of intellectual discourse regarding social and economic systems, you aren't more informed. But it's alot easier to identify the propaganda being fed down your throat in America if you weren't fed it from birth to current age.

Re:Poor Fabian

[RWerp]

As someone who lives in China, I can tell you that most of the horror stories people hear about the 'evil commies' are wildly out of context

You mean there are no labour camps in China?

Re:Poor Fabian

[melgeroth]

Yup. No afghani's being beaten up in America either. Do you know what context is?

Re:Poor Fabian

[dapyx]

why aren't we informed which country it was?

It's Romania.

Re:Poor Fabian

[johannesg]

Moreover, I don't understand what it has to do with debunking databases. I looked through the site and couldn't find much information related to database debunking - well, other than books or reports I was expected to pay for.

Yeah right, I'll pay money to see someone rant against common industry practice... NOT.

The way he uses indentation to show different contexts is also rather confusing. Fortunately I don't care enough to actually want to understand his point. Good thing too - I might have had trouble sleeping tonight, otherwise...

Re:Poor Fabian

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily true. As someone who lives in China, I can tell you that most of the horror stories people hear about the 'evil commies' are wildly out of context. And I easily roll my eyes at all the American's who run around talking about the "freedom" they have.

Do you roll your eyes at the Chinese too? I know I do. Your average Chinese has just as poor of an understanding of life in America or Western Europe as the Westerners have of life in China. At least, this is true in my experience. I just don't see the example of China supporting the idea that living in a communist state provides one with a better understanding of social systems in general.

Re:Poor Fabian

[Freon115]

Did you even bother reading his article and the previous discussion?
He mentions his origins because that's what stupid slashdotters attacked him on last time.

Re:Poor Fabian

[MemoryDragon]

Arr somebody mentioned, he came from romania. I have not grown up in a socialist country (unless you agree with good ole Arnold the Governator, actually living here was more free than in many other countries)

But giving the almost non existend distance I already met a bunch of romanian people. Believe me if you made it up to the age of 13 you probably had a harder life than most people up until the age of 65 in other countries. The country really was fucked up in many regards, with a totalitarian neo Cesar on top of it. If there ever was a European big brother like country, probably Romania would have deserved the title.

But back to the other quote, have you ever spent a a thought about following that in the US you constantly here how good this country is, that it is the best to live in the world at least ten times a day in variations, no matter how f**** things are. Probably the guys in Vietnam and noq Iraq hear/heard it also every day on the US radio, television etc... while bleeding to death in the sand / or were bleeding to death in the jungle.

Great that the government and the country is so great, while the government has a serious pribe problem, with legalized bibe with the face of electional donations etc... Given this guy is heavily sensitive to this issues, I am glad he speaks out openly.

RDF

[alexborges]

The main concern of fabian is how a language defined for cross platform syntax representation in general (XML), is used for a model that is, by nature, semantic.

His argument is impecable cause the shortcommings of a subset of XML, made to mimic SQL and SQL mistakes is not really an advancement, except to help close the gap between RDBMS's SQL implementations.

But, there is a language out there that can fully represent the relational model. Its called RDF and a subset of it can be serialized into XML. So maybe the question we should be asking is Is that subset of RDF enough to implement the relational model?

Cause, if it is, then kill XQUERY and use RDF-XML and alas, the best of both worlds (XML ubiquity plus RDF semantic strenght) is what we can use.

Now they realized

[pklinken]

I guess with the coming of DATABASE DEBUNKINGS many people in the IT
sector finally realized that the one thing they really couldnt stand was a smartass.

There's nothing there, yet we need help

[Animats]

That article is just a long flame.

There are real issues, but the article doesn't address them.

Tree-based databases are thirty years old. See MUMPS. Explictly linked databases are also thirty years old. See the CODASYL DBMS. XML database enthusiasts need to read up on those old systems to avoid making the same mistakes.

Relational databases aren't enough, either. When you find yourself putting columns of serial numbers in tables so you can link tables together, the relational model isn't fitting the problem.

These issues are not being addressed all that well.

Re:There's nothing there, yet we need help

[wintermute42]

The XML community seems to be largely devoid of any knowledge of history or computer science depth. I have yet to find a description of XML schema processing in terms of grammars and parsers. The brain damaged SAX parser has become popular, while few know about the XmlPullParser. Since many of those who use XML parsers don't seem to have ever parsed anything else, they do not seem to find it odd that the scanner should call the parser, rather than the other way around.

Perhaps this lack of computer science depth is due to the fact that XML grew out of the dot-com bubble, when people felt they had no time to design or think about much. Just get it out the door. It was also during this time that the field was flooded with people who had not necessarily studied computer science.

Re:There's nothing there, yet we need help

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you duplicate the serial number? Ever heard of foreign keys?

Re:There's nothing there, yet we need help

[Anonymous Coward]

Relational databases aren't enough, either. When you find yourself putting columns of serial numbers in tables so you can link tables together, the relational model isn't fitting the problem.


Clearly, you do not know what a relational database is. You, like many others, are simply the grist for Pascal's mill.

You don't link tables (or relation variables). A relational database management system should give you a rich enough type system so that you can use whatever attributes necessary in a tuple to uniquely identify entities. You should be able to use composite keys without any limitations or worries about space. A good RDBMS would be able to do whatever physical linking and space saving necessary in the physical backend layer to accommodate foreign key relationships with composite keys.

In, many cases when people do this they find that working with composite keys is cumbersome and they blame the relational database. This is kind of interesting phenomenon and conclusion. In fact, it has nothing to do with relational databases (at least in the electronic sense).

The use of surrogate keys long predate electronic data storage systems. Prisons have used numbers for inmates, cars have used license plate numbers, and the SSN was established, long before Codd wrote his seminal papers.
So I don't see what adding columns of serial numbers has to do with a failing of the relational model. The use of "serial" numbers in general has to do with the difficulty of finding good, stable, unique identifiers for entities of interest.

As for times when you NEED tree based data (which is actually less common than most people think). A common mistake is to look at something like an org chart and think that this should be codified as a simple tree, when in reality the tree itself is a physical report that can be derived from more explicit base data. Anyway, I don't see why linking tables can't use the explicit base data in foreign key relationships.

One of the problems of the RDBMS products today and in part the fault of SQL is that "tables" or relvars are WAY to heavyweight. In a true RDBMS a relvar is a fundamental variable much like local variables in a C function. The relvar should be able to referenced in arbitrary expressions with no silly ordered syntax like SQL. Relvar literals should be easy to define in expressions. A "link table" shouldn't be such a heavyweight object in the minds of a database designer. Because of the highly restrictive way SQL works, "Tables" get an overblown status as some kind of special object that makes things like tree data very difficult to work with. This is a failing of the RDBMS products on the market today, not relational model.

Any good RDBMS implementation would have necessary functions to make dealing with tree data easy, or the language would be general enough that they could be defined anyway.

The difference between Fabian Pascal and the truly enlightened is that the while both have come to the same conclusion that the masses are asses, the latter knows there's nothing that can be done about it, and no point in bitching about it either .

Actually I do respect Fabian Pascal, and I am not really bashing him for his diatribes. I can't see how his behavior is any more of a waste of time than, say, posting on slashdot. I just hope that he actually ENJOYS running his website and is actually not as wound up as he sounds in his rants. In other words, if he is sort of like a maddox of the data fundamentals world I guess that's a good thing. If he really is this concerned about the state of the world constantly then he really could use some professional therapy or counseling.

Also, Fabian Pascal is way to impatient. The Codd material only came out about 30 or so years ago. That is not a long time for these things to materialize into usage by the mainstream engineering field. Couple this with the fact that the overwhelming perception is that many things in this field are "good enough."

Re:There's nothing there, yet we need help

[Anonymous Coward]

When you find yourself putting columns of serial numbers in tables so you can link tables together, the relational model isn't fitting the problem.

It is when you are doing transactions over a stateless transport like HTTP, and you need (1) to be able to edit and rename things arbitrarily and (2) give clients an abstract handle that isn't changed out from underneath them.

Re:There's nothing there, yet we need help

[Anonymous Coward]

Most tables HAVE a primary key in them somewhere. It is just a matter of getting the data in there or making sure it is designed correctly. Why put a monotomicly increasing number? It makes for a 'easy' primary key. Also computers do not think in "Somelastname, SomeFirstname". They are basicaly super calculators. They LOVE integers.

Lets do a 'C' example

int x = 1;
int y = 1;
if (x == y) {//do some work}

OR we could do this
char *pX = "SomeString";
char *pY = "SomeString";
if (strcmp(pX,pY)) {// do some work}

Now do this same operation 300000 times? Which will finish faster?

Do not forget the FOUNDATION of the computer you are working on. While data purity is nice. It sometimes sucks for speed... Computer Science is not about 'best design' it is about 'best fit'. Sometimes you have to stand on your head and rub your belly to make it finish in a reasonable time frame.

I do agree with many of his arguments though. There are serious issues. But all he does in those articals is poke holes. I think he needs to show fixes too. The 'I may not know art but I know what I like' argument does not fly long in a discussion.

I also went and read the previous artical. I think he missed the REASON XML is getting a relational bolt on. People need to agrigate the data in the XML tables. Most SQL servers (Oracle, mysql, MSSQL, etc) are 'disconnected' from the program itself. You have to jump through a few hoops to get the data into the format you need. And it is usually in the form of ODBC which bites big time. Then once it finaly comes out of the DB you have to re process the data into a form you can use. XML is solving that little problem nicely but it is creating all new ones...

Also his reasoning for disliking XML because it is 'fat' is a good reason. Once the format is 'done' you do not need extra formating. However debugging XML is probably much easier as we humans need to read it...

Re:There's nothing there, yet we need help

[tigersha]

> I have yet to find a description of XML schema processing in terms of grammars and parsers.

You are seriously joking, yes? Read anything about RELAX NG for a start. Look at programs like relaxer and other Schema compiler compilers. RELAX NG was based on Tree Automata from day one.

Re:There's nothing there, yet we need help

[Anonymous Coward]

First, there were navigation databases.

Then, there were "relational" databases.

Some people want to go to "true" relational databases, but I say that's crock. The next step is obviously:

SOCK PILE DATABASES.

*ta-dum*

Yes, the future of database technology is a system where you just stuff data in one disorganized, structureless blob, and pull it out the other end without having to worry about whether it's stored in B-trees or 2-D tables or what-not. Instead, your data is a cloud, and the DBMS just magically knows what data you want when you request it.

*bows* Thank you, thank you, just send me $5 and you can have exclusive ownership to this idea.

Re:There's nothing there, yet we need help

[wintermute42]

A fair criticism. However, the sad truth as far as I can tell is that Relax NG will be an also ran. XML Schemas seem to have become the standard and I have not seen any formal defintion for how a schema defines an XML document. That is, does a schema define an LL(1), and LR(1) or a backtracking tree match (which seems to be the case).

So, yes, not everyone is clueless. But what seems to be the accepted standard does appear to have been developed by the clueless.

Re:There's nothing there, yet we need help

[smallpaul]

The XML community seems to be largely devoid of any knowledge of history or computer science depth. I have yet to find a description of XML schema processing in terms of grammars and parsers.

Hedge automata: a formal model for XML schemata

The brain damaged SAX parser has become popular, while few know about the XmlPullParser. Since many of those who use XML parsers don't seem to have ever parsed anything else, they do not seem to find it odd that the scanner should call the parser, rather than the other way around.

What does scanning have to do with XML parsing? The whole point of XML is that the tokens are predefined (elements, attributes, text nodes), so that the application writer does not need to deal with scanning at all. It is an internal detail of the parser.

If you are trying to say that the application should call the parser rather than the other way around then you are making some sense.

But the underlying problem is actually the programming languages we have available. The single-stack languages that are popular force either the parser or the application to NOT keep its local data on the stack. Since the first XML parsers were more complicated than the applications built on top of them, the parsers took the stack and the application had to deal with callbacks. Now parsers are commonplace and it is right that the roles should reverse and the complexity should be pushed into the parser. (and pull parsers are gaining in popularity)

But whose fault was it that we had to make the choice in the first place? The programming languages! Languages with coroutines do not have this problem.

Perhaps this lack of computer science depth is due to the fact that XML grew out of the dot-com bubble, when people felt they had no time to design or think about much.

Let's presume that's true. Then what is the excuse for the commercial DB world that Fabian Pascal claims is just as broken? I guess that things went wrong in the "minicomputer bubble"? Can you remind me of a time when the industry was moving slowly enough that people could be contemplative?

A scientist newbie on the net..

[SlashDread]

Nothing to see here, move along..

"/Dread"

Its not about eletism, its about ability

[FunOne]

I'll admit, I cut my first databases in MySQL with a php front end. But I've moved on since then and I have to agree with the parent of the parent poster.

Learning how to properly design & use a DB is not an easy job, and most people do it ass-backwards wrong, especially those versed in the Php-MySQL mindset.

That is not a healthy mindset for developing a mission critical system, and I would hope that anyone consider it would realise this.

Lets put it this way:
Would you hire a developer who didn't understand how to use a Linked List? What about a developer who thinks that LL are unnecessary or overly complicated? What about a developer who doesn't use hash tables? Doesn't see the point, just iterate over the array and check for equality they say! If you don't need them in the programs I've written they're just not necessary!

You'd say that person has no programming experience and you wouldn't trust them to design or implement a serious, important peice of software.

Its the same for a DB design who doesn't use forieng keys, or views, or constraints. It exhibits a clear lack of understanding and experience in developing a serious database layer. I wouldn't trust that person to ensure that the data in my database is valid data.

Re:Its not about eletism, its about ability

[Anonymous Coward]

Its the same for a DB design who doesn't use forieng keys, or views, or constraints.

Foreign keys and constraints, sure, but I don't see the amazing cant-live-without usefulness of views... they're basically just stored queries, and if your frontend is generating the SQL (i.e: it's not you typing it in every day), how is a view really all that useful?

Chomsky quote

[BitwizeGHC]

Much has been made about the Chomsky quote at the top of the page. It *is* rather ironic that Chomsky is often way off base when it comes to political issues due to an a priori assumption that American capitalism is, necessarily, detrimental and oppressive.

However, he is right in that quote, in that sometimes it's convenient to dismiss other people when you don't like what they have to say, and this is an impediment to objectivity.

However, there's another side to this: sometimes someone will come around, spewing horseshit, and everyone, sometimes even the speaker himself, knows it's horseshit, except you're not allowed to say "That's horseshit" because you can be accused of prejudicially dismissing a valid opinion. (Substitute a more polite word where appropriate; although I wish more people would use words like "horseshit" at places like academic symposia when they genuinely apply.)

Me, personally, I dislike XML for anything but what its predecessor, SGML, was intended for: large documents consisting of mainly human readable text with markup to add structure and shape formatting. For query languages we could do probably do better than SQL but I think XQuery was invented merely to be buzzword compliant. The debate is probably far from over and done with, though so laissez les bons temps rouler.

K (lameless filter sucks)

[warrax_666]

Kx's database is column-based instead of row based. That makes it hugely efficient for some queries (which tradition row-based RDBMSs have trouble with) and incredibly bad at others (in which traditional RDBMSs shine). It's just a question of trade-offs.

Also, if databases were ueber-efficient at executing SQL queries, there'd be no great need to use server side stored procedures to speed things up.

I think you've misunderstood something. The idea behind Stored Procedures is that you offload the data processing onto the server (which is much, much more powerful, presumably) and you don't have to transmit huge amounts of data to the client. The usefulness of SPs has nothing to do with the efficiency of SQL as such, it's more about relative processing power and infrastructure.

Re:K (lameless filter sucks)

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea behind Stored Procedures is that you offload the data processing onto the server (which is much, much more powerful, presumably) and you don't have to transmit huge amounts of data to the client.

They also eliminate round-trip latency from a network connection. Milliseconds add up when you're trying to do a zillion transactions a second.

Re:K (lameless filter sucks)

[georgewilliamherbert]

Kx's database is column-based instead of row based. That makes it hugely efficient for some queries (which tradition row-based RDBMSs have trouble with) and incredibly bad at others (in which traditional RDBMSs shine). It's just a question of trade-offs.

Well, that's one major Kx feature, yeah. It's a bit more than just that, from reading the description.

Kx isn't the first column-based database, either. Sybase's IQ product (formerly IQ-Multiplex) has been out for years now, with the exact same tens-to-hundreds of times faster response rate for data warehouse type column searches, and the same relative slowness in transaction based updates.

I'm not really a DB geek, but it seems to me that a database that could do both row and column based tables would be an interesting development, and even more interesting would be having a table be able to be stored and accessed both as rows and as columns in different areas of the table would be more interesting still...

Re:K (lameless filter sucks)

[Anonymous Coward]

The second argument for SPs is much more relevant than the first. Sure, the server is probably beefed up beyond belief, but it should focus on doing those tasks which can only be done on the server, namely accessing the disk array and hunting down query results. Any additional processing is just an extra burden, which while usually affordable in a reasonable mid-sized application, certainly isn't optimal. Even if the server is 100x faster than the clients (unlikely), it'll end up slower overall when you put 1000 clients on it. The bandwidth argument is much more relevant, since sending huge data sets all at once to the client for processing may be a very bad idea, depending on the application.

Programming is politics.

[Anonymous Coward]

Insisting on separating technology from politics doesn't sound insightful to me, it sounds myopic, futile and absurd at best.
Look at P2P, the GPL, copyleft, freedom of information, encryption, freedom of association, control of the press, international data exchange, border controls, biometrics, GPS, satellite transmissions. These and many, many other standard news items are precisely about the intersection of politics and technology and that's just in IT. Let's not even start on biology and physics.
Anyway, the issue with Fabian Pascal is not poltical really, it's personal. He takes the comments made about him personally and he wears his ego on his sleeve.

Some things never change

[SJasperson]

Fabian Pascal was a flaming asshole on every database-related forum on CompuServe 15 years ago. He was always posting about how he was right and everyone else was wrong, and about how his opponents were just stupid. Nice to see that in this ever-changing world there is a rock of stability.

SQL is terrible...

[morgdx]

SQL is the worst language for accessing relational data, apart from all others that have been tried before.

(Sorry Winston)

A testimony to insecurity and neo-accomplishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Pascal makes a number of interesting points, although he does himself a disservice by wasting energy engaging some of the people here who probably were more interested in pushing his buttons than having a productive discussion. He does illuminate an ever-growing trend where acerbic, personalized, condemning rhetoric is perceived as an alternative to actual substance.

This really bothers me. Everyone's welcome to criticize, but NOT everyone's opinion is equal (IMO). Take a person like Robert X. Cringely, who every other month has a goofy idea about how to get rid of spam, when his main experience with it is as your typical e-mail user and not a network administrator. His opinion pales in comparison to that of someone who is down in the trenches and has more experience and depth of knowledge. Unfortunately, Cringely and his bone-headed schemes get more attention than other, much-more-credible and much-more-realistic ideas proposed by those who have demonstrated that they are part of the necleus of the issue, as opposed to some journalist who's job is merely to regurgitate press releases and manufacture titillating bylines.

We have a new breed of "experts" which aren't really experts in any field other than caustic communication.

Mr. Pascal has a long and distinguished career and has been a visible pioneer in this industry. Perhaps his critics have equally illustrious careers involving the development of adult porn password databases, Starbucks employee management, kissing TA ass and other equally relevant disciplines that, when coupled with some clever put-downs compensate for a grand-canyon-sized disparity in real-world wisdom.

Everyone's opinion is worth mentioning, but if you're going to dis someone like Pascal, you better open your fly and whip your own dick out and prove it's bigger.

The Genius of Fabian

[NFNNMIDATA]

From the article:

The US system cannot use coercion (well, not at the Soviet level, at any rate, but the way things are going, give it time), so it must rely solely on propaganda, which must be believed. This means it's got to be very subtle and psychologically simple and attractive, rather than blatant and absurd, to be at once unobtrusive and effective. It's no coincidence that the mother of marketing and advertising originates here. If you step out of line, the government does not need to come after you: business, the media, and even the public itself will. They cannot jail, torture, or disappear you (the system is testing the waters, though), but they will try to marginalize you, and make it very difficult to function professionally and socially. And at least insofar as members of the public are concerned, they are enforcers without realizing it. Quite elegant.

Here Fabian shields himself from all Slashdot criticism by naming all present and future critics as unthinking instruments of a subtle US-Gov't-approved populace coercion macine. Since he's doing to Slashdot users the same thing he is accusing them of doing to him, I would have to assume the whole thing is an elaborate farce.

Not that it will matter if it's not. Slashdot is one of the great sources of contrarianism in the known universe, a trend which will no doubt continue in spite of any popular movements to beat down Fabian Pascal.

Re:The Genius of Fabian

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if the propaganda is believable, that's good enough for me. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Fabian Pascal and Compuserve

[Anonymous Coward]

Be easy on the guy, he's got a lengthy track record of going hyper as a result of public BBS discussions.

Long before there was a Slashdot or a public recognition of the internet, there was Compuserve and its discussion forums. One such forum, CONSULT, for computer consultants, would regularly see Fabian go into apoplectic seizures and jihaads of righting conceptual database wrongs. You'd log in to forum view and see threads that had 127 messages since that morning, for example; those were the ones where Fabian was pissed off and taking no prisoners. I seem to recall that he was eventually banned from CONSULT.

My guess is that hosting his own web site is a Godsend for him. He can rant and rave without contradiction, something that was hard to do and get an audience back in the very early 90s.

So seeing this title today was mildly amusing to me. :)

PS: I have a Compuserve subscriber magazine from 1991 that features Rush Limbaugh's own discussion area on Compuserve. So, many obsessive-compulsives got their start on "CI$". :)

Religous Argument and Ad Hominem Attacks

[Tober]

The argument of "Relational or Not" has the same religious overtones that the "Perl vs. Python" or "Emacs vs. VI" or "Linux vs. Windows" or "Democrat or Republican" arguments take. At the end of the day it is a subjective opinion and a personal choice made for personal reasons. One would hope that people would the better tool for the job.

There is also the little issue -- that many have pointed out -- of needing to get work done. IF (and that is a big if) we all were to accept the premise that a truly relational model is the end all be all data model, it fails to address the fact that such an implementation is much more cumbersome: it takes more programming, more SQL, more time. And in the business world time is money and money matters.

In the article to which this slashdot story is linked, Pascal says:

Note: Participants in the thread use aliases rather than real names. So much for the courage of their convictions.

That would be a circumstantial ad hominem attack. In fact his first bullet point response to the post is more straw man and ad hominem attacks. Certainly many of the posters on slashdot do the same but to get in a pissing match with fallacious arguments adds nothing meaningful to the debate and is probably counterproductive.

Pascal's writing are littered with fallacious arguments. Take for example from his original "No Integrity: A Systemic Problem" article on dbazine.com where he starts a paragraph with "As long as inferior nonrelational products are bought...". Throwing the "inferior" word in there is begging the question and it is a loaded word. All of this is quite unfortunate because there is some useful information sprinkled in his articles. Just like it is good for a programmer to know both functional and object oriented programming, it is good to know about the relational data model.

Re:Religous Argument and Ad Hominem Attacks

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, you are so SMART, with all your little declarations and announcements. Way to distinguish between attacking an opponent and attacking his/her ideas. And the economy of effort with which you dismiss his ideas! Astounding, almost effortless!

Gee whiz, are you CLEVER!!!

Sadly..

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly a lot of you don't realize your limitations. You have been told over and over again you're smart, brilliant possibly even a genius. But this was all relative. You were told this by people like your mom or your high school teachers. The fact is that what Fabian Pascal is writing about is actually above a lot of you; but you don't get it and don't realize it

Re:Sadly..

[Anonymous Coward]

Pascal's the only one I see claiming to be a genius around here. Most of us are just claiming that he is irrelevant or not worth interpreting.

Even if he is a genius, how many geniuses have practical ideas that they can explain to non-geniuses? Not many, and certainly not Pascal. He seems to be in adamant denial that all this high-availability, high-integrity, very important, enterprise and military computing and data manipulation is going on in open disregard of his cherished principles.

His argument is akin to: "Let's change how everything works so that we can enjoy a 5% improvement in coding efficiency and .0007% fewer instances of data corruption. You idiots."

Re:Sadly..

[Capitalist1]

Fabian makes an appearance!

For someone who derides others so vehemently for being nothing but subservient herd animals, this Fabian character sure does spend a lot of time deriding people for not being subservient to him. I guess he picked that habit up in the old Soviet Bloc, too. Either that, or from reading way too much (meaning, any) Chomsky, who also has that habit. No one is smart unless they agree with him, and how dare you demand that he prove he's smart, because he's already laid out all the evidence for you, you're just too dumb or dishonest to see it...

While the guy is somewhat quirky...

[Qbertino]

... he does actually have a point with his Introduction to REL. I wrote a comment in the last article which puts SQL and DB design into perspective. It actually emphasises what he's trying to do with REL. There's no doubt: SQL does suck, whether it's sufficent to describe relations or not. And while you definitely shouldn't use a DB PL to design a DB (see other comment), we actually could use a successor to SQL.

Re:While the guy is somewhat quirky...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, I just love the layers of RDBMS "debunking" that go on. Oracle/Postgres supporters are quick to deride MySQL as not being a "true" RDBMS, because it's not inherently relational. REL derides Oracle/Postgres as not being "true" RDBMS's becuase they are not "fully" relational. For a given value of "fully", of course.

So now we have "Why not MySQL", and "Why not SQL". Somebody should set up a page called "Why not REL".

Re:While the guy is somewhat quirky...

[MemoryDragon]

The problem is if you stay on a relational level, you run into the main problem, that all your operations are basically done on mathematical sets.

Now lets have a look at SQL, very clumsy, but it more or less is nothing else than a mapping of the mathematical set operations into something more verbose.

Unless you define a new set of set operations (great sentence hey) or unless you move away from a strict mathematical set approach (like many did before) you always will end up with something similar to SQL with a varying syntax.

I think the best approach would be really to move away from a stricktly set based approach to something else to increase the operations domain. But XML is not the answer, XML face it is neither usable for query languages nor for data stores. The current hype about XML dbs can be basically compared to the hype people had about OODBS a few years back (which suffered from other problems of a connection of code and DB which was too strong in many cases, and lousy query mechanisms in other cases)

TransRelational Model and Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Date, Fabian et al. have some pretty good ideas. The problem is that I'm not sure how sincere they are in their dealing with the FOSS community. For example, Date seems to have connections and covertly work for some people who have basically patented some technologies and have not even implemented them but are eagerly awaiting somebody to implement them in order to sue that person. What I have in mind is the TransRelational model (Required Tech., Inc.) and the view update mechanism presented in Date's "Intro to DBM". If you go and check out Required Tech's web site, you 'll see there's absolutely nothing there. There's just one comparison paper whose authors claim to have implemented the TransRelational Model for the sake of comparing it with other DB physical models . I don't know of anybody else using that model. Yet Date is fervently advocating it!

SQL problems.

[argent]

You can't optimise queries that you can't express in SQL, so you end up avoiding simple operations in favor of complex ones that happen to fit into the syntax.

For example, there's no update-or-insert operation in the standard, so half the database vendors out there add it as an extension, and half argue that you shouldn't do an update instead of an insert anyway. Meanwhile you play games with temporary tables to make your updates fast enough. Maybe.

Whether there's enough of these cases to make a difference, I don't know. But they are tough for optimisers to figure out.

Fabian Was Recognized as a Pioneer

[Lucas Membrane]

In the use of a sock puppet persona on Compuserve about 10+ years ago. He also got thrown off forum after forum. That's the price of being whatever he is.

XML does suck

[greenail]

He does have a point about people using xml for human readable formats sucking. I'm getting sick of having to edit ugly xml format config files. My though is if you are going to use xml to store startup/config data, give me an easier way to update my config. For example;

./updater -u name=value

or better yet include a gui that can properly represent complex nested data structures. otherwise, what is wrong with the good old

#standard txt config
name=value

XML configs do not help the end user to use an application effectively with a short learning curve. It does however allow the developer to be lazy, say RTFM, and slack on documentation, which is the core problem with most of the OSS movement.

is pi=3.14?

[jogbra]

No, but it is a reasonable approximation in the real world. It seems like Fabian is complaining a lot about the difference between the pure relational model and the "impure" implementations. There is no such thing as perfect circle in the real world so what use is it to calculate the area or diameter using the full infinite expansion of pi? I don't need to understand why pi*r^2 calculates the area of a circle (in the sense of a rigorous mathematical proof) to actually do the calculation or make effective use of it.

I'm not saying that understanding fundementals and pure theory is a bad thing. I think it is essential if you want to architect systems and be able to make strategic design decisions. But it seems like Fabian does not want to accept that the world is filled with many different types of people. Not everyone is going to be an architect (not everyone wants to either). If Fabian had his way you would need a PhD in physics before you could become a mechanic, a PhD in biology before you could become a gardener and a linguistics PhD before you became a public speaker. I'm not saying you wouldn't be a kick ass gardener if you have a PhD in biology, but it is definitely not necessary.

Re:is pi=3.14?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up! - This is exactly the issue and I was thinking of the same example. And people are missing it, this isn't and Perl vs Python type argument - he is saying True relational databases will have some magical internal implementation that will cause them to magically outperform all the current impure db's which are shackled to SQL but he never explains how this will happen.

It is the same as saying that all engineering/modelling software will magically perform better if people would use the mathematically pure value if pi. Yeah, and FFT's and everything else would work great if we could implement the mathematical models directly somehow.

I think it would be great to have a more relational language for db's but I have no illusions that it will somehow send db internal performance into orbit. Fabio and his supporter also constantly bitch about NULLs as if they were the antichrist, but IIRC Codd, although he said he regretted it, included them in the model - so if they embrace the rest of the model so unequivically then why bitch about NULLs. Their work arounds to avoid NULLs are great in theory but a big pain in the ass to implement in current db's.

I also think Fabio was on here during that discussion under a very pedantic alias, but I am too lazy to dig up the posts.

Re:is pi=3.14?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pi is not equal to 3.14. Is 3.14 a "reasonable approximation in the real world" to Pi? The question lacks precision. For some applications using the approximation 3.14 in place of Pi will yield meaningful results, in others it will not. It really depends on what you are doing.

Whether you choose to use 3.14 as a reasonable approximation of Pi in a calculation has nothing to do with mathematical purity. You forego purity when you choose to assume at one point that Pi is equal to 3.14 and at a later point assume that it is not. Most people run into trouble because they do not realize or actively think about the assumptions that their calculations rely upon. Thus, they violate the assumptions without actually being aware of it. You can't have it both ways though. You can't throw away mathematical precision at one step and then rely on it at the next step and still expect to get meaningful results.

Note that a PhD in mathematics is not required to understand what I have written above.

Re:Fabian's first error: In the name.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't it be "RINS"?? That's what it says on the web site: "Rens Is Not Sql".

Another European Snob

[netglen]

Honestly, this guy takes the typical stance of these snobish intellectuals. I once had a German college Professor who was a terrible anti-American snob. His first statement to our history class was "...I would like to apologize to everyone in this classroom since the American school system has failed you. I'll need to teach down to you now." Besides that, all his maps of Europe were in German since he only trusts German map makers. Oh boy, what a semester that was. Then again that was my gut reaction for that guy's letter. I'll have to go back and re-read his site again. He really doesn't give a good impression to his readers.

Re:The Genius of Fabian (Fabian contra mundi)

[rycamor]

Yes, it is exactly that side of Pascal's persona (the Chomskyite side) that makes it so hard to see the value of his real accomplishments. Those he can't convince are automatically members of the mindless free-market apparatchik, and those he can convince are the brave but pitiable few who will be ground up and spit out by the soulless machine of modern commerce. Either way, you lose, it seems; and I think Pascal somehow wants it to be that way.

Note that if you are one of the people out there who actually makes a habit of approaching new ideas with interest, and happen to be convinced by the logical arguments he makes (as I did, before I was distracted by all the politics and personality), you will probably be quite disappointed if you send any note of actual encouragement to him. The response almost always takes a negative tack.

Quite unfortunate, really. While I think the objective truth of the phenomemon he talks about happens quite often (marginalized by a conventional-thinking public, etc...), there is no great conspiracy here. There are just people deciding what they want to deal with and what they don't. I was a geek in high school. I know what it is like to be shunned by the popular crowd, and to inwardly seethe at their shallow cultivated ignorance. Most poeple prefer mediocrity. The job of any great thinker or artist is to help people see a way past mediocrity, but that can't be done by force. And it really can't be done if you hate or despise those you are trying to convince. Unfortunately, the downside of a democracy is that people might do and think things you don't like. Thus, the only way to... get your way is to convince people agreeably. Even if you are right, forcing people to agree with you is wrong. But maybe Pascal disagrees. Maybe we should have some sort of utopian socialism ruled by the intelligentsia (do the 'intelligentsia' ever conceive of it any other way?). Yes, and then the government can appoint Pascal a seat on the National Education Board, or something like that, which will lay down the 'guidelines' about what will be taught in the schools and universities. I can see the exhaustive tests and questionnaires that every computer science professor will have to fill out. And of course the appropriate punishments will have to be meted out in order to silence dissent on this matter. But of course this will have to be done, because a free market (for money OR ideas) will lead some to ignore the obviously true principles of logic, thus allowing some to have wrong conjectures, and intellectual anarchy will result!

See the essential dichotomy of Pascal's argument here? On the one side, he lauds anyone with the mental self-reliance to escape the Trap of Commercialized Education, but on the other side, he decries a system that allows people to make up their own minds about what they will buy, do with their lives, and ultimately, believe (if I correctly read between the lines on his many comments about education). As if somehow people are powerless to make up their own minds in anything.

Oh, and read Paul Johnson's Intellectuals for a glimpse at the world of Noam Chomsky and other great minds of the past 2 centuries. Quite revealing in how these people are so willing to sacrifice real people for the sake of their theoretical constructs. Why do so many intellectuals, great in one very specific area of endeavor, think that somehow qualifies them to judge every other area of life?

tell someone who cares

[epine]

If Fabian is talking to the world at large, he should back up his complaints with constructive proposals. It's a complete waste of bandwidth to throw around a lot of complaints without putting those complaints into a context of how life might be someday improved. I read Fabian's original screed without learning anything solid I could take away as a perspective on SQL's weaknesses. I didn't notice a link to the REL project last time around, but this time when I looked at REL as least I came away with some concepts about how SQL's syntax is less than ideal. However, I'm not yet convinced that syntax matters as much as Fabian would like me to believe and I as far as I read the REL documentation, I didn't come away with any semantic insights.

BTW some people on this thread have argued that optimization is targetted at the semantics expressed by the syntax. This is far from being necessarily true: it's quite possible to a language to choose different optimizations for two expressions with semantic equivalence because there is a *cultural* difference in the intent and expectation of those expressions (e.g. assumptions about whether many or few results are expected). The "unless" syntax in Perl falls into this category of *cultural* semantics: the predicate is expected to evaluate 'true' for the productive execution path of the application.

As for your colleague, you provided her with a technical opinion on a project where it probably mattered to her whether she achieved a successful outcome. If you showed up for a job interview at my company and commented "isn't it OK to tell people their projects are going to fail without offering constructive advice" you'd be crossed off the list on the spot. It's useful to provide that advice if the time and place does not exist for something better, but it's also a sure sign of a bad attitude that you don't hold yourself to higher standards of contribution.

Which paragraph contributes more to the world long term: my blather about Fabian in my first paragraph, or my pointed observation about cultural effects that break down an abstraction barrier between syntax and semantics concerning optimization strategies in my second paragraph?

A bit slow on the uptake?

[cjmnews]

According to the article it has been posted since July 23rd. It's now Sept 6...it's taken a month to recognize that this article was up?