From: KW

To: Editor

Date: 7 May 2004

You may already be aware of this [Microsoft research] paper [by Jim Gray] The Revolution in Database Architecture.

From: Fabian Pascal

To: KW

No, but it sounds very much like Gray's interview that I debunked a while ago. Marketing-driven, buzzword-filled pronouncements, rather than scientific progress, is what can be expected from business interests, particularly monopolistic ones. When was the last time that major, fundamental [database] technology progress came from a dominant vendor, whose large installed user base constrains it to its past product flaws? All they brought you is object and XML databases, which are regressions, not revolutions.

What the industry needs is not more marketing "revolutions", but adherence to sound foundations, on which real progress can be built. It is quite telling that (a) the relational model was invented at the Microsoft of that time, IBM, but was first ignored, then poorly implemented, violated and distorted (it was the upstart Oracle that implemented SQL first), and (2) the last important technological innovations—the TransRelational™ Model of implementation and the Dataphor data language--did not come from Microsoft, Oracle, or IBM, but rather from small upstarts, and have been completely ignored by an industry driven by the big three to focus on buzzwords.

To quote Dijkstra again:

… as long as the computing science is not allowed to save the computer industry, we had better see to it that the computer industry does not kill computing science.

Posted 08/06/04