DATABASE DEBUNKINGS

Data professionals tend to dismiss as pedantry the insistence by relational proponents on rigor and precision in use of terms and concepts. The relational model (RM) put database management on a formal foot and that explains some of the hostility to it: an industry used to operate in an ad-hoc, trial-and-error manner, based solely on product training, resents what I refer to as the "tyranny of theory".

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My keynote address at the Northern California Oracle User Group Spring 2013 conference added to the SCHEDULE.

BTW: If you live in San Francisco, attend the conference on 5/22 and can give me rides to and/or from Pleasanton, or know somebody who can, it will be greatly appreciated. Please email me at the address on the ABOUT page.

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The 'Quote of the Week' was posted on the QUOTES page.

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A 'To Laugh or Cry' item was posted on the LAUGH/CRY page.

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A link to my latest All Analytics column was posted on the FP ONLINE page.

In Challenge: Build MySQL table that's not in first normal form MR writes:

I have read numerous books and articles about database design and SQL in which it is said that a database should be in first normal form (1NF). (Some then go on to describe situations in which it may be smart to denormalize a bit, but that's a different subject.)

1.
My keynote address at the Northern California Oracle User Group Spring 2013 Conference is on the SCHEDULE page.

BTW: If you live in San Francisco, attend the conference on 5/22 and can give me rides to and/or from Pleasanton, or know somebody who can, it will be greatly appreciated. Please email me at the address on the About page.

2.
The 'Quote of the Week' was posted on the QUOTES page.

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A 'To Laugh or Cry' item was posted on the LAUGH/CRY page.

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A link to an online exchange I participated in was posted to the FP ONLINE page.

I will probably address some of the issues on my All Analytics blog. Stay tuned.

5.
San Jose State Philosophy Dept. Criticizes Online Courses

Didn't I tell you so?

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Google Aims To Patent Policy Violation Checker, Potentially Revolutionizing Email Snooping

Any organization that grows beyond a certain size and gains a certain level of market dominance -- what is called 'institutional power' -- is not any different than an oppressive government. One of the indicators of reaching that level is the creation of a lobbying arm and gradually increasing the focus on it, as well as for the disregard of the public.

There was IBM, then Microsoft, now it's Google and Facebook. But a significant difference between the former two, other than arrogance due to corruptive power which is common to all dominant corporations and the latter two, is the nature of their business models. Exclusive reliance on advertising, whose profitability inherently decreases with time pushes  into ever more evil behavior in order to sustain grows and profitability.

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A Google search that hit my site:

"which is better, a highly normalized database or a database structure that makes end user data acces".

In So What is a 'Large Database' JS states:

The points you make here, and consistently ... center pretty clearly on distinction between logical models and physical implementations. Products that sacrifice the logical model for various practical considerations (speed, size, cost, etc. - at least in the short term), reinforce the general lack of focus on, or understanding of, the relational model, as well as diminishing appreciation of the distinction betweenlogical and physical.

Physical data independence (PDI) is, indeed, a core advantage of the relational model, but hardly the only one I have focused on over the years. And the relational model is hardly the only component of the foundation knowledge that is increasingly lacking in the industry.

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Details of my keynote address at the Northern California Oracle User Group Spring 2013 conference is on the SCHEDULE page.

BTW: If you live in San Francisco, attend the conference on 5/22 and can give me rides to and/or from Pleasanton, or know somebody who can, it will be greatly appreciated. Please email me at the address on the ABOUT page.
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2.
The 'Quotes of the Week' were posted on the QUOTES page.

3.
A 'To Laugh or Cry' item was posted on the LAUGH/CRY page.

Carl Hewitt's "response" to Date and McGoveran letter to the editor criticizing  his previous nonsense. Incidentally, somebody Googled "chris date mcgovern [sic] carl hewitt" and here's the blurb that comes up:

Carl Hewitt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carl Hewitt is Board Chair of the International Society for Inconsistency ... which was developed in the early 1970s by Sussman, Hewitt, Chris Reeve, and David ...

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A link to an online exchange I participated in was posted to the FP ONLINE page.

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The first installment of my Debunking Corner for the Northern California Oracle User Group Journal Spring 2013 issue has been published. A link to the journal PDF was posted on the FP ONLINE page (scroll down).

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The Costly Illusion: Normalization, Integrity and Performance paper has been revised to correct an error (see Understanding Further Normalization: 2NF).

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A Bing search that hit my site: "optimal database for complex xml schemas nosql". I don't think that's what the author had in mind.

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From a LinkedIn Profile:

Mary Hart
B2B Tech Marketing Copywriter/Professional Liar, Greater Boston Area

I would appreciate the honesty but for for the logical paradox.

I strive and manage to avoid errors most of the time, but given the amount of writing I do, not 100% of the time. The chance for slipups increases when many examples are involved and I focus on the same material for an extended period of time. Luckily, there is usually some reader who stays awake while reading it and notifies me. This is what happened with the 2NF example in my normalization paper. This is the bad news.

The good news is that this is an opportunity to provide those who purchased the paper with a correction, while at the same time give those who have not, what I consider the right way to think of further normalization advanced in the paper. (The paper has been revised accordingly; revised copies will be delivered upon request).