Re: Useful Oracle books

People that go and listen to Chris Date usually come back with a fresh look of the world. My old friend Mogens Egan recently saw Date in London and told everybody who cared to listen that Date had given him back his interest for relational databases.

Mogens

Michael Milligan wrote:

Anthony,

Excellent remarks. However, you seem to pitting theory against practicality
in a way that does not allow them to coexist. As Date would say, "Theory is
practical!" That is actually one of his chapter names. Your example of
preventing duplicates is a great case in point. What is the meaning of a
result set with duplicates? What can you do with it? If I see three
identical rows, meaning there is nothing returned to differentiate them, how
can I, or my client use that information? I may as well just do a count.

What you find anal I find brilliant. Every "i" is dotted and every "t" is
crossed in Date's logic. It has symmetry and completeness I have rarely
found elsewhere.

Look at it this way: you may argue that there are times when we should break
away from the theoretical to get the practical accomplished. But every time
you "break away" from the theory, you making an exception you will have to
keep track of and account for. Yes, you can duplicate data to prevent joins.
But make sure you have a trigger to handle the extra update, etc., etc.
Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it gets out of hand.

I enjoyed your remarks.

Thanks,

Mike 


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