AVR-Chat

On Saturday 07 August 2004 21:31, Graham Davies wrote:
> --- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, Bernd Felsche <bernie@i...> wrote:
> > Their minds [at the MIT AI Lab]
> > may be too highly trained.

> I hear you. And, so do they. The AI people are the most active in
> cross-discipline brainstorming and just about every other way of
> looking at problems from new angles.

> > Maybe he has trouble in expressing
> > his concepts in language ...

> I don't think you've read the paper.

You reckon?

Confusing 3NF with chaos is a something only an amateur would make.
1NF is the most-verbose means of storing data, and the one in which
relationships are least-obvious. 

Yet that is the "Perfect Data" model. 20 out of 35 table entries are
undefined in the example, producing very low information density.
What aggravates the situation is that every detail will include a
great deal of redundant data; data which are naturally "compressed"
in a well-designed relational database.

The RDBMS model of data is just one way of managing data. The closer
the model to the real world, the more complex it gets.

Jumbling all data into a single "table" isn't going to solve any
technological problems; maybe problems of perception and prejudice.
What it will do is create huge computing overheads because there's
no relationship to entities established in Perfect Data. If for
example, an entity changes its name, then every record containing
the old name has to be changed to the new. 

In a well-designed RDBMS, one changes one row that contains that
entity's "name" property. All future data retrievals will then
produce the current company name... a change record may be
desirable; but that means at most 3 records changed/added per entity
property change.

In the past decade and a half, I've gone through a number of poorly
designed RDBMS that were closer to the "Perfect Data" model; and
every time they had to change an entity attribute, it's been a
mountain-moving exercise to implement because all the transactional
histories required for audit purposes have had to reflect the
change. That sort of thing is so ugly; and prone to unleashing all
sorts of gremlins when it takes a production database offline for 2
days or more to do the data change in tens of millions of records.
Of course; they always want an audit trail!


BTW: Implying that the Orbital Engine has changed the way in which
people "view the future of the combustion motor car" is simply
ludicrous.  It demonstrates a great lack of knowledge and
understanding in that realm. If he'd said that the Orbital Engine
changed the way in which the Orbital Engine Company viewed its
future, then that would be spot-on.

-- 
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
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