From: Fabian Pascal
To: Patrick Hallock
Date: 29 May 2003
Why did you publish [in the Journal of Conceptual Modeling] that nonsense by
Riggs? Now you've forced my hand to rebut XML yet again. What a pain.
From: Patrick Hallock
To: Fabian Pascal
Here is some of my thinking on that article and many articles like it.
XML is the answer - now what was the question again?
I figured you and hopefully others would react to the article. So, far you have
and I appreciate that. This person is a teacher at a significant university
therefore I can only assume he is teaching students that these things are true.
Being a teacher myself I thought it best to print the article and wait for the
storm. Especially yourself since you were quoted in the article. If these kinds
of articles are not addressed, they will show up somewhere in his students
handouts or whatever with very little rebuttal. Thus another generation of
students goes into the market place thinking these ideas to be true. If he were
merely a person in the field doing some work in a small company that would be a
different issue.
I think XML is useful just like SGML and EDI were useful. I believe, I cannot
remember the source, the father of XML wrote an article that XML is now being
used for things he did not intend and was worried that it was going to be over
used and hyped.
I did not expect to raise your blood pressure so high. I do not think XML and
especially recent XML writers are taking reasonable positions. Having heard
C.J. Date at the BRG a couple of years back I can understand why is he would
also not like this position. I though the most interesting statements by Date
were along the line of university students are not taught referential integrity
even though the teachers use his book for the course. The audience provided the
appropriate huge gasp!
I gave a presentation at a state college here a few weeks ago. They were using
tools from 20 years ago to design databases. These tools were before most
database engines understood RI. The professors had no idea where the world is
today let alone several years ago. I have far less mercy for those teaching
such ideas and quoting people false or incompletely.
I wanted a reaction and I guess I got it sorry for the surprise. Maybe I should
warn you next time and surely there will be a next time, as some other
professor will attempt to promote a faulty interpretation of XML and relational
theory or some other magic solution.
Some XML articles are like weeds they keep coming back and it takes a lot of
weed killer to get rid of it.
Even though I have read articles that attempt to portray you and Date as the
relics of a bygone era I and many others do not see the world that way. As you
know I am friends with Terry Halpin, I was just visiting him and talked about
the article also. He also knew you would react and that it would be a useful
reaction.
As the managing editor, it is delicate balance between printing an article and
then bashing it at the same time. That is a way to scare away would be writers.
Maybe, I will also make some comment in the next issue about XML Over the Edge.
You can steal that title if you like.
From: Fabian Pascal
You are right in principle, but only if we were in a rational
system, with proper value placed on education [and knowledge]. Unfortunately we
are not. So the number of those who will be convinced by Riggs' article will be
much higher than those who are capable of understanding rebuttals. That's a
fact.
So in such a system it is, alas, better to leave this nonsense to the industry
and trade media--they publish this crap left and right--and focus on things
that ought to be written for only those who can and will think, but are not.
The other problem is that it takes tons of time and space to respond coherently
to that which is incoherent (Date's Incoherence Principle). Each page of Riggs
takes several pages of rebuttal. It is very easy for the likes of him to write
his stuff--they don't demonstrate, prove, provide evidence, explain, structure
things logically etc., just declare--but very tedious for us to do all that
which he does not, if we are to be consistent with our philosophy. Doing this
for free is very hard to justify.
That [extending things to aspects for which they were never intended) is always
the case in the industry, it is the rule not the exception. That’s why it
should be left to the industry, they will do it anyway.
Students are taught very little, if anything, on fundamental. Universities have
become certifying vehicles for MS, Oracle, etc. And the people who are hired to
teach are industry people who have gone thru the same educational system and
know nothing beyond products and industry hype. And even if they are trained as
academics, they are so driven by “the market”, that they are no longer
scientists.
What you describe may be true for small colleges, but the top
universities emphasize the latest fads and nothing about fundamentals even
though they ought to know better.
To reiterate: the average reader cannot make proper judgment
and your policy is likely too subtle to get thru.
From: Patrick Hallock
Thank you for the insight and I do agree. Maybe the JCM
should not concern itself with articles that are over the line. I would still
publish XML articles, but only if they stay within the reasonable bounds of XM.
Likewise for other article subjects as well.
I had not heard of Date's Incoherence Principle, I wish I had. It seems to be
an interesting observation.
From: Fabian Pascal
I DK how you can stay within reasonable bounds with XML, but
definitely you should not offer a platform for nonsense like Riggs'. His
problem is not just XML, but much more serious--he does not understand the
basics of the field he's in.
Here's Dijkstra:
The ongoing process of becoming more and more an
a-mathematical society is more an American specialty than anything else (It is
also a tragic accident of history).
The idea of a formal design discipline is often
rejected on account of vague cultural/philosophical condemnations such as
"stifling creativity"; this is more pronounced in the Anglo-Saxon
world where a romantic vision of "the humanities" in fact idealizes
technical incompetence. Another aspect of that same trait is the cult of iterative
design.
Industry suffers from the managerial dogma that for the
sake of stability and continuity, the company should be independent of the
competence of individual employees. Hence industry rejects any methodological
proposal that can be viewed as making intellectual demands on its work force.
Since in the US the influence of industry is more pervasive than elsewhere, the
above dogma hurts American computing science most. The moral of this sad part
of the story is that 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.
From: Patrick Hallock
I watch my wife trying to teach math. She goes though every new book fixing
errors before she has to confront the students. The materials are edited for
political correctness, but not mathematical correctness. I visit her school and
watch kids about to graduate that cannot do fractions or know what a slope is
not even if you are talking about a roof. Many days I would like to go help,
and then I think how could I even go about it. The solution seems so far away
from what is happening.
So, what are the critical areas of learning for our field? That may be a
starting point.
From: Patrick Hallock
That's the ultimate fate of all large empires, which is a
good thing. The US becoming the only superpower is the bell tolling--it ensures
decay. [Ed. Note: If most Americans
believe in the crucial function of competition, why is it that they also
believe that the only superpower will always be benign, even in the face
of so much evidence to the contrary?]
See The Chasing of
Mayflies: Reply to Riggs.
Posted:
09/12/03
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