Thursday, April 25, 2013

Site Update



1.
My keynote address at the Northern California Oracle User Group Spring 2013 conference was added to the SCHEDULE.

BTW: If you live in San Francisco, attend the conference on 5/22 and can give me rides to and/or from Pleasanton, or know somebody who can, it will be greatly appreciated. Please email me at the address on the About page.

2.
A link to my latest All Analytics column was posted on the ONLINE page.

Incidentally, since with the discovery by business of analytics as some sort of "new data science", overnight born-again BI experts proliferate like frogs after heavy rain. It suggest a similar poverty of foundation knowledge and rich debunking targets.
Please submit any pearls you come across that could be targets interesting from a data perspective.

3.
The 'Quote of the Week' was posted on the QUOTES page.

4.
A 'To Laugh or Cry' item was posted on the LAUGH/CRY page.

Many years ago I wrote something about what I called the "kitchen sink" approach to data management, but this one takes the cake. All the following are included:
  • Key-value pair programming language
  • Entity Attribute Value database model
  • Relational Database Management System, specifically Postgres 9
  • Objects and object metadata
  • SQL client interface (returns objects of various types)
  • Procedural SQL [FP: Huh?]
  • Schema of "Sprout data model" [FP: Wonder what that is]
  • Objects (tables, views) are accessed with their resource identifier
  • High level syntax-independent [FP: Wow!!!!]
and much more (check out, in particular, the bulleted list of features).

5.
A link to an online exchange I participated in was posted to the FP ONLINE page.

6.
Consider the topics in Jonathan Lewis' Oracle Mechanisms Webinar in the context of my argument that, given so many physical/implementation factors that affect performance, why the instinct to attribute poor performance to (logical) denormalization?  And there are many more than those tackled by Jonathan.

7.
While checking hits to this site, I noticed that one of them was due to the  following Google search: "My data model is a better model of reality than your data model. What would your response be?"

Well?



Thursday, April 18, 2013

Site Update



1.
My keynote address at the Northern California Oracle User Group Spring 2013 conference was added to the SCHEDULE.

2.
A link to my latest All Analytics column was posted on the ONLINE page.

3.
The Quote of the Week was posted on the QUOTES page.

There was a comment to my recent Un-muddling Modeling, Part 1 that the conceptual and logical models do not require the relationship concept. However, this does not mean we cannot refer to relationships that are implicit in the models and that is usually in response to arguments like this one.

4.
A 'To Laugh or Cry' item was posted on the LAUGH/CRY page.

Nokia Entertainment: Why we went Mongo

An excellent example of how products are selected in the absence of foundation knowledge.

Related.

Ideas to integration data sets from structured and unstructured data

Bay Area coding boot camps promise to launch tech careers   
SAN FRANCISCO -- Looking for a career change, Ken Shimizu decided he wanted to be a software developer, but he didn't want to go back to college to study computer science.

5.
A link to an online exchange I participated in was posted to the FP ONLINE page.

How to I create a logical data model for Geospatial Data?

6.
Big Data Is Just For Big Companies - And Other BS

There are two related core cycles in IT: centralization/decentralization/re-centralization and corporatization/democratization/re-corporatization.

7.
I have often referred to the difficulty of conveying informally the formal without losing either the rigor, or the audience. David Portas, one of the few knowledgeable practitioners, demonstrates some of that difficulty in his comments to the following post by Hugo Kornelis: NULL - The database's black hole

8.
Enjoy.

Big Data Dilbert


Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Site Update



1.
My keynote address at the Northern California Oracle User Group Spring 2013 conference was added to the SCHEDULE page.

2.
The 'Quote of the Week' was posted on the QUOTES page.

3.
A 'To Laugh or Cry' item was posted on the LAUGH/CRY page.

4.
Links to online exchanges I participated in were posted on the FP ONLINE page.

5.
I agree with most of Cary Millsap's take on NoSQL and Oracle, Sex and Marriage, but note that there is no reference whatsoever to the implications of the data models involved.

6.
After First Great Blunder Refuted consider my Type vs. Domain and Class.

7.
Another job description: Analytics- Data Modeler. Any idea why I post such?



Sunday, April 7, 2013

More on Relational Denial



Note: What follows are my comments on a LinkedIn exchange, So What is a 'Large Database'? Minor edits of the online comments for grammatical, clarity, precision and coherence purposes are within square brackets.
PS: No doubt Oracle/SQL Server/etc are designed and optimized to deal with normalized data. That's where the power lies. They're like Sirens though ... those who don't respect them with proper designs are destined to have performance crashes (bear with me on this metaphor will ya? :)

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Site Update



1.
The 'Quote of the Week' was posted on the QUOTES page.

2.
A 'To Laugh or Cry' item was posted on the LAUGH/CRY page. Many pronouncements exhibit poor grasp of foundation knowledge.  It is a rich target for  debunking, so I may tackle it at some point. You may want to test your mastery of fundamentals before I do.

3.
Links to online exchanges I participated in were posted on the FP ONLINE page.

4.
Job description: Solutions Developer. No comment.

5.
An oldie but goodie republished: Leonardo Was Right!


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