A while ago Chris Date wrote Rules and Constraints: Reply to Ralph Kimball to which he never got a response. I had myself an exchange on Kimball’s so-called “dimensional modeling”. We did not intend to waste any more time on the subject.

 

Then I got the following email from a reader:

 

 

From: TM

To: Editor

Date: 1 Apr 2004

 

You'll love this. Kimball has come up with a new term ... the “mini-dimension”!  There seems to be no end to the amount of terminology that he can invent to commercially rephrase the literature on relational theory.

 

 

This brought to mind an email received one day earlier.

 

 

From: MD

To: Editor

Date: 1 Apr 2004

 

I recently came across Allen Holub's site and while I was reading this below, your writings and consequent reactions immediately came to my mind:

 

September '03: Why getter and setter methods are evil

The discussion group attached to this article is an eye   opener. Though the article discusses a concept that's been an integral part of OO for 25 years, many readers attacked both the article and me personally with a viciousness that's outside my previous experience. This "discussion" is a sorry commentary on both the lack of professionalism found in many members of the programming community and also the state of knowledge present in those programmers.

Before perusing this discussion, you may want to get some perspective by reading Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments by Justin Kruger and David Dunning (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77:6 [December 1999], pp. 1121-1134).

 

 

I quote from Unskilled and Unaware of It (emphasis added):

 

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

 

Kimball cannot be “rephrasing” relational theory, as we don’t believe he knows and understands it. Which is why he’s coming up with all these terms in the first place.

 

 

Posted 05/21/04