[lbo-talk] Hill refines her posish on war

[Tayssir John Gabbour]

On 3/18/07, Andy F <andy274 at gmail.com> wrote:
> A couple of years ago I was with some relatives by marriage -- old
> money, family trust fund people -- and they were talking about
> investing in some sort of new database technology that was supposed to
> be 10000 times faster than what's available currently.  I expressed
> skepticism -- sudden advances come in tiny increments, not the sort of
> leaps you see in movie macguffins.  They assured me they had had it
> checked out with some very established specialists, pioneers in
> databases in fact.

My understanding is that mainstream databases are kinda like
mainstream economics -- dresses itself with the trappings of math,
we're supposed to take its practitioners seriously, but it turns out
to be clunky and unnatural at actually doing its job. ;)
<http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/letters/CACM-RelationalDatabases.html>

When I last looked at the dominant model, it didn't seem that many
vocal supporters (like Chris Date) fully understood the alternatives.

(Personally, what has always weirded me out about common databases is
they look nothing like what people typically do with data. People
stuff their models into this unnatural form, for little compensation.)

This weirdness is pervasive within the tech world. It's amusing to
look at job ads and see how near-unemployable I am for many positions.
The clumsiness of most mainstream tools is too great. Many others are
in the same boat.
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2950949730059754521>

Tayssir