1. Quote of the Week
The most visible limitation of the relational model has been its inability to handle multimedia files, but the importance of this has been overstated. In fact, the relational model has some far more significant limitations that have not yet been challenged:
Every new relational application needs a new set of programs developed from scratch, which is labour-intensive, expensive and wasteful.
Relational applications cannot be readily tailored to the needs of large numbers of individual users, which is an issue for ASPs.
Relational applications cannot record a piece of information about an individual thing that is not relevant to every other thing of the same type. This limits our ability to continually improve customer service levels.
Information about identical things in the real world is structured differently in every relational database, so it is difficult and expensive to amalgamate two databases."
--Simon Williams, The Associative Data Model
2. To Laugh or Cry?
3. Online debunkings
4. Interesting elsewhere
Rare Alan Turing journal shows his genius at work"
It's clear that fundamental logic is at the heart of computer science and everything we do--and in that sense it's clear the whole field owes Turing so very much" ... But in a sense, it also shows how far we've come."
Including away from logic.
5. And now for something completely different