Follow @DBDebunk Follow @ThePostWest


1. Schedule update

September 23rd, 10:00am, San Francisco, CA
The CWA, Missing Data and the Last NULL in the Coffin
Presentation, Oaktable Conference, Oracle OpenWorld

October 8, Milan, Italy
Denormalization for Performance: A Costly Illusion
Public presentation, UGISS SQLSaturday

October 9-10, 2013, Milan, Italy
Business Modeling for Database Design
Private seminar sponsored by Microsoft and organized by SolidQ
Contact: Davide Mauri, SolidQ

2. Quote of the Week

How many software programs are mathematically provable. And yet everybody still writes software and for the most part it works. Relational theory and SQL was very important for establishing a standard across vendors to a point. And yet switching relational database vendors is still very expensive proposition because the standards don't address the features that users need and use everyday that are not part of the standard. At the heart of the system the relational model can still be enforced. But a product lives and dies not on whether it is mathematically provable but it's features set, efficiency and cost to develop in.
--LinkedIn.com

3. To Laugh or Cry?

Please help with my data model design

If this was student homework, it is an excellent example of how database management should not be learned and a validation of the substitution of the "cookbook approach" for education. Ironically it's in the forum's section "Relational theory". Had theory been taught, such questions would have not been asked. 


4. Two online exchanges I participated in

• Modeling for NoSQL, Schemaless & Unstructured Data

Predictable--it was just a matter of time. My latest post at All Analytics is quite apropos: Real Data Science: General Theories of Data.

• Five myths about big data

In this context, consider In Silicon Valley, age can be a curse.


5. And now for something completely different

Not entirely unrelated:

Facebook boosts connections, not happiness study

The Curse of Self-Service (h/t Davide Mauri)