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"To Laugh or Cry?" Test Your Foundation Knowledge

Tuesday, January 20, 2015 6:30 PM

Microsoft
1065 La Avenida
Building 1
Mountain View, CA  (map)

RSVP here
 


You are a DBMS ace, able to squeeze every ounce of performance out of it. But how about your foundation knowledge, how good a grasp of data fundamentals do you possess? Are you a data management ace too?

The two are distinct and while the former is necessary for a career, it is insufficient for an informed, intelligent, reliable and productive data management practice. The industry is full of myths, misconceptions and traps and without foundation knowledge you are unable to see through them.

This is your opportunity to test yourself. If your instinct is neither to laugh, nor to cry at the contents of this presentation, education may be in order.

• How misconceptions that you are unaware of, lead you astray;
• Practical implications thereof;
• How foundation knowledge, scarce in the industry, is the only way to see through them.

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My January post @All Analytics 

To ensure operations on database tables or extracts thereof make sense and result interpretation is correct, the analyst must know what the tables mean. The meaning is not in the tables, but in the business rules it is associated with it, which may be undocumented.

Read it all. (Please comment there, not here)



 

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Pls see the PAPERS page for current version of this paper, when it becomes available.

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To all my readers and colleagues, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Xmas and a healthy, prosperous and Happy New Year!!!!

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1. Quote of the Week

Relational is/was a way for humans to understand how computers could organise data. From a day back when disks were expensive. --LinkedIn.com

2. To Laugh or Cry?

How Google Will Use Firebase to Supercharge Its Cloud Computing

Another reinvention of a (square) weheel.


3. Online debunkings

Calendar supertype

4. Interesting elsewhere

On Persistence and Data Management

An oldie but goodie; check out my comment.


5. And now for something completely different

Fascinating:

John Cleese on the Black Knight and Douglas Adams' High Heels

About The PostWest:

White House exempts Syria airstrikes from tight standards on civilian deaths

Remember all the fuss about Israel not doing enough to prevent civilian deaths? The hypocrisy!

• Iranian Supreme Leader calls for Israel's 'annihilation'

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by Erwin Smout

[FP: Two weeks ago I posted a debunking of an article blaming some SQL sins. Erwin has some additional comments.]

1. Multisets

From the original article:

It is beyond any doubt that set is the basis of mass data computation. Although SQL has the concept of set, it is limited to describing simple result set, and it does not take the set as a basic data type to enlarge its application scope.