Hi Mladen, Well I think this depends on your individual perspective. I agree your observations of commercial realities. I think this is universal for all practitioners. However I also believe that were it not for the R&D (which also involves mathematical rigour, commercial technologies like relational databases might not exist. I thought that RDBMS's were a result of Codd's early work which is *very* mathematical. So as practitioners, we should perhaps be mindful of the input such activities have on our commercial worlds. ALso, I remember reading one of the reviews of Date's book where the intent was stated as restating the theoretical basis of RDBMSs without much of the mathematical basis. I haven't read it yet although I'd like to, if I could only find the time between work and family commitments. I guess this book is like the practitioners intro to relational theory. Does this match the perspective of those who have read the book? I imagine that those who want to read the mathematical basis of these theories might find what they seek in Codd's original works Just another opinion worth about $0.02 Russell Searle On 6/16/05, jsb@xxxxxxxxxxxx <jsb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Mon, 13 Jun 2005, Mladen Gogala wrote: > > - but like Bruce Hornsby said, "That's just the way it is." > > > regards. > -- > //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l