Re: Picking the Tools -- Marrying processing models to data models

["Al B. Snell" <alaric@alaric-snell.com>]

On Wed, 23 May 2001, Uche Ogbuji wrote:

> > Where I work, I design relational database schemas and code side by side,
> > but paying attention to the fact that this is an interface; I try to
> > minimise the assumptions each side makes about the other...
> 
> Ah.  Then working with you would be a much more pleasant experience than
> I've had with most development teams. 

Thankyou :-)

> It's just amazing and dismaying how few programmers have any interest
> in data design (and I'm not just talking about knowing how to
> construct the occasional SQL query).

Yeah. One thing we are forced to live with is that the vast majority of
people who make decisions in the software field (a combination of
young programmers who get overopinionated about the merits of their
favourite tools and IT managers who are making decisions based on
marketing information rather than technical information because there are
not enough managers with technical skills or technical people with
management skills account for a good percentage of this, I reckon
:-) are... crazy!

> Independently of the OO versus the world debate-- I think one of XML's
> important results is encouraging programmers toward such interest
> (even if it's driven by the demotic incentive of lining their CVs).

Yes. XML does nothing, technically, that hasn'e been done before, but
beforehand the idea of a cross-platform data representation was solely in
the hands of protocol and file format designers. The presence of a global
Internet has thrust this issue into the collective consciousness :-)

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software