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Expertise in a field and ability to convey it to others are distinct and the latter requires different motivation, skills and talent. Many top technical experts are more often than not poor communicators, whether verbally or in writing, for some inherent reasons, Codd being an excellent example. That's one of the core reasons for poor foundation knowledge in data management in general, and the appreciation of the relational model in particular.

In a previous post I started a little experiment: I asked both readers who think they know and understand the relational model (RM) and those who do not but want to, to comment on whether a theoretically correct explanation of data fundamentals offered by reader PK was helpful and, if not, why not. I promised to draw some conclusions regarding the difficulty of dispelling misconceptions without losing either theoretical rigor, or the audience--a non-trivial task for an educator in an industry that deems theory impractical.

I can't say the response exactly answered my question (I recommend reading the comments, though). But let me, as promised, try my hand at making better sense of both the explanation and the comments (for an in-depth treatment see paper #1, Business Modeling for Database Design). Let me know if it helps..

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1. Schedule reminder

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

I am constructing a new website ... using node.js. Its aim is to have many subscriber (people who offer help and people who need help) it should be scalable in different language. I have to decide wich is the more suitable db. I am thinking about to have two db (mongodb and postgress) for site languages and people account, people should vote other people ability. As db experts could you give me some suggestions? What would think could be a good db choice?
--LinkedIn.com

3. To Laugh or Cry?

Can anyone guide about using DB2

4. Online

• My latest All Analytics column: Understanding Data Independence
• Exchange I participated in: Not convinced about this whole Big Data thing 

 5. There were several posts on this site about Meijer article, its support by a letter to the editor and reactions by David McGoveran and C. J. Date to both. But I missed the one by my fellow relationlander Erwin Smout: A letter by Carl Hewitt. At one point he writes:

At any rate, I'm still left wondering what mr. Hewitt's problem is here.

I don't know why he wonders -- it is pretty obvious to me.


6. The frequency of fads has been increasing and the time between them decreasing. Today pushing a "new thing" starts before the last fad is exhausted: The Next Wave of Data Management


7. And now for something completely different: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

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See

Data Model: The RDM Is, the E/RM Isn't

Follow @DBDebunk Follow @ThePostWest



1. Schedule reminder

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

Q: One of the main resistences of RDBMS users to pass to a NoSQL product are related to the complexity of the model: Ok, NoSQL products are super for BigData and BigScale but what about the model?

A: Actually graphs are the way we (people) think and organization data in our head, as computer people it is on[e] of the most popular way[s] we are taught to think about data, so this should be natural.
--slideshare.net

3. To Laugh or Cry?

"Splunk for Big Data"

4. My comment at Robert Young's blog

No Mas!! No Mas!!

5.
Something I argued much before they did.

Think Big Data Is All Hype? You're Not Alone

5. And now for something completely different.

High-tech toilets vulnerable to hackers

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