What are the design criteria for primary keys?

#31

....

Quote:

Justin Wilson, the Cookin' Cajun! Had a great PBS show at the time.
Model 204 was an inverted file system database. They never got
commercial success even with a really great product because their
biggest customers were CIA and NSA.

The CIA rep who kept his sunglasses on indoors remained expressionless.

In the Cold War days, those guys did not want a lot of people knowing
what they used, how big the DBs were or anything else. One of the
"urban myth" stories about 204 was that a salesman approached the
Russians about buying the software. The next week, he was drafted and
sent to the DEW line.

Thanks, you're right, it was Justin Wilson.

The CCA people (vendor of M204) used to shake their heads about the CIA
problem reports. In those days, some problems had to be accompanied by
a printed storage 'dump', many of which were over 1,000 pages long.
Apparently the CIA dumps sometimes took weeks to arrive and were pretty
stringy because a razor blade had been taken to large portions.

#32

The experiment continues and there is yet hope that StackOverflow.com
will redeem itself. However, I don't think it is there yet.

While the first 20 viewers of the question found 5 people willing to
vote to close for ambiguity a clear, concise, straightforward question
with a clear, concise, straightforward answer, the next 110 or so
viewers found another 5 (well, me plus 4 others) willing to reopen it.

By the time I found it reopened, it already had 1 vote to close it again.

I offered a bounty of 500 reputation points to see whether anyone is
willing to take all the hints and write a good answer.

I am interested to see what happens in the end.

#33

On Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:28:04 -0300, Bob Badour
<bbadour (AT) pei (DOT) sympatico.ca> wrote:

[snip]

Quote:

Try living with an address that has a street #, a phase # and a suite #.
I cannot count how many idiotic programmers wrote code that threw away
key parts of my address when I had one like that.

What is a "phase #", please? A quick Web search got me nothing.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

#34

On Sun, 05 Sep 2010 23:04:43 -0300, Bob Badour
<bbadour (AT) pei (DOT) sympatico.ca> wrote:

Quote:

The experiment continues and there is yet hope that StackOverflow.com
will redeem itself. However, I don't think it is there yet.

While the first 20 viewers of the question found 5 people willing to
vote to close for ambiguity a clear, concise, straightforward question
with a clear, concise, straightforward answer, the next 110 or so
viewers found another 5 (well, me plus 4 others) willing to reopen it.

By the time I found it reopened, it already had 1 vote to close it again.

I offered a bounty of 500 reputation points to see whether anyone is
willing to take all the hints and write a good answer.

I am interested to see what happens in the end.

I am not hopeful. This is a recent post by Joel Spolsky:
http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/08/31.html
One paragraph starts: "There is, however, a compelling case for the
Stack Exchange technology. WordPress.org’s forums don’t have voting,
so you have to read through every answer and decide for yourself which
one might solve your problem. They don’t have reputation, so there’s
no way to see whether you’re getting an answer from someone who knows
what they’re talking about."

1) Why would you not read through the answers yourself? You know
your situation better than anyone else and can judge the
applicability.

2) Correctness does not come out of voting.

3) Reputation and knowing what one is talking about are not the
same. Just because someone knows a great deal about an area does not
mean that he understands your part of the area.

Too often, IT sorts get into reducing everything to numbers even
when it does not fit. There is one forum, where after five years, I
am still down as a newbie. I post when I have something to post, not
for the sake of posting.

Bob, this post really is not for you that much. You and I stand
fairly close together in the choir.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

#35

Gene Wirchenko wrote:

Quote:

On Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:28:04 -0300, Bob Badour
bbadour (AT) pei (DOT) sympatico.ca> wrote:

[snip]

Try living with an address that has a street #, a phase # and a suite #.
I cannot count how many idiotic programmers wrote code that threw away
key parts of my address when I had one like that.

What is a "phase #", please? A quick Web search got me nothing.

Imagine 2 or 3 towers in a condominium development. Phase 1 gets built
first, Phase 2 gets built second and the developer abandons Phase 3
before it's finished because the real estate market went soft.

Now, imagine they are joined at the base with a single entrance and a
single street number.

#36

On Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:56:38 -0300, Bob Badour
<bbadour (AT) pei (DOT) sympatico.ca> wrote:

Quote:

Gene Wirchenko wrote:

On Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:28:04 -0300, Bob Badour
bbadour (AT) pei (DOT) sympatico.ca> wrote:

[snip]

Try living with an address that has a street #, a phase # and a suite #.
I cannot count how many idiotic programmers wrote code that threw away
key parts of my address when I had one like that.

What is a "phase #", please? A quick Web search got me nothing.

Imagine 2 or 3 towers in a condominium development. Phase 1 gets built
first, Phase 2 gets built second and the developer abandons Phase 3
before it's finished because the real estate market went soft.

Now, imagine they are joined at the base with a single entrance and a
single street number.

Ah. I have never seen that. I have seen buildings in a complex,
but I do not think with the same address for two buildings.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko