The following statement by Matt Rogish at Slashdot.org was in response to some utter nonsense. Matt, why not call a spade a spade: ignorance and stupidity, the prevailing state of the union, not just the industry.

You can begin to understand how Date and Pascal et. al. at DBDebunk.com feel if you consider the following scenario (this thought exercise presupposes that perfect is possible):

You spend a lot of time and effort developing The Perfect Car which is perfect in every way. Not only does it not require any non-renewable resources, but it drives to any destination perfectly and is perfectly safe. You work out all the mathematical details and proofs and can say: "I have proven that this car is perfect."

Since you do not have the time/expertise/money/etc. to build The Perfect Car you then license your Perfect Car Model to the big automakers. They then proceed to implement your Perfect Model in the form of a "Perfect Car" Implementation. Unfortunately for them, building The Perfect Car is very, very difficult, almost impossible. The automakers then proceed to make significant changes to your Perfect Model. They cut corners, make changes which violate certain precepts and assumptions in your Perfect Model, etc.

They then put The Less-Than-Perfect Car on the market but proceed to call it a Perfect Car. After the "Perfect Car" Implementations that people start to buy get lost, run out of gas, and even blow up and kill them, they start saying: "These Things are wrong with the Perfect Car!"

Enterprising people then decide to try and fix the "Perfect Car" Implementations by creating New Perfect Car Models. Some of these models include the implementations as a background. Some create Entirely New Models Without Significant Scientific Background. They provide, possibly, incremental improvement over the "Perfect Car" Implementations but generally include just as many, if not more so, opportunities for flaming, burning death as the current Implementations. Not only that, but they throw out Actual Working Parts of the "Perfect Car" Implementations!!

And all the while you are there, yelling from the sidelines: "But that is not a Perfect Car! I have shown you the path (Model) to building the Perfect Car! I have Proved it True! If you'd stop wasting your time on these other Stupid Designs and focus on the Perfect Model then we'd all be better off!"

Now that this long-winded description is over you can replace The Perfect Car with The Relational Model and "Perfect Car" Implementations with {Oracle, MySQL, etc.}. You can replace "New Perfect Car Models" (including "Without Significant Scientific Background") with {XML, OO-DBMS, 'Persistence Layers', etc.}.

No one is saying that you cannot use SQL products or XML, or that you cannot accomplish tasks in these tools, just that when used in the context of data management they are poorly solving what the Relational Model already solved.

Because IT practitioners are poorly educated and increasingly fad-driven they latch onto non-solutions (like XML, "Post-Relational", OO-DBMS, etc.) and put little or no pressure on DBMS vendors to get it right. Even worse, if someone does release a Truly Relational DBMS there are no guarantees that anyone will buy it due to the ignorance of the IT community.

Put simply: People don't know what they're missing, so they don't know to ask.

Posted: 5/27/05