Hello,

When time comes to build transactional databases (as opposed to data
wharehouses), I belong to the school that STRONGLY believe in
normalizing data with high integrity mechanisms. I know all the
performance cons but IMHO, pros largely overwhelme.

It amazes me, though, how many systems rely on the application to
manage data integrity. I work as IT director for a large-size
manufacturer and *none* of our applications use integrity. And I am
talking here of ERP and other mission-critical systems.

In fact, I had rarely open a database properly normalized and
inforced ... and I have been working with databases for over 10 years,
mostly in sectors where lack of integrity can result in dramatic
consequences.

What is wrong with modern DB design approaches? And what's the point
of using a big relational DB without the benefits of integrity and
normalization?

Thank you,
EBL

Hello Eric,

On 5 oct, 20:30, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I supose you are new in the position ;-)

I have the same experience, and I never have found an IT director who
thinks like you.

The problem is not in modern database theory, the problem is that most
developers don't know the foundations of their profession and common
sense is very uncommon.

In my country most people who develop business systems never read a
database theory book. The few ones who studied a database course in
the university never understood database theory very well at all, and
they forgot almost everything just on the end of the final
examination.

The textbook we used didn't have any chapter devoted to database
integrity, only a few pages about the poor SQL declarative integrity
support, and not covered with exercices. The whole Relational Model
was dispatched in five hours or so, and taught with many mistakes and
misconceptions.

The vendor's training materials are usually even worse.

And we also have all that abject oriented programming stuff saying
that RDBMS's are nothing but silly and cumbersome register buckets.

It is not only integrity and normalization. Most developers I know are
not able to write non trivial queries and they load the data in the
applications using simple queries, make several iterations on the
registers, and send the data back to the DBMS.

In the business software industry, technical incompetence is the norm,
and the develpment tools we have are awful.


Regards

Hello Eric,

On 5 oct, 20:30, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I supose you are new in the position ;-)

I have the same experience, and I never have found an IT director who
thinks like you.

The problem is not in modern database theory, the problem is that most
developers don't know the foundations of their profession and common
sense is very uncommon.

In my country most people who develop business systems never read a
database theory book. The few ones who studied a database course in
the university never understood database theory very well at all, and
they forgot almost everything just on the end of the final
examination.

The textbook we used didn't have any chapter devoted to database
integrity, only a few pages about the poor SQL declarative integrity
support, and not covered with exercices. The whole Relational Model
was dispatched in five hours or so, and taught with many mistakes and
misconceptions.

The vendor's training materials are usually even worse.

And we also have all that abject oriented programming stuff saying
that RDBMS's are nothing but silly and cumbersome register buckets.

It is not only integrity and normalization. Most developers I know are
not able to write non trivial queries and they load the data in the
applications using simple queries, make several iterations on the
registers, and send the data back to the DBMS.

In the business software industry, technical incompetence is the norm,
and the develpment tools we have are awful.


Regards

Hello Eric,

On 5 oct, 20:30, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I supose you are new in the position ;-)

I have the same experience, and I never have found an IT director who
thinks like you.

The problem is not in modern database theory, the problem is that most
developers don't know the foundations of their profession and common
sense is very uncommon.

In my country most people who develop business systems never read a
database theory book. The few ones who studied a database course in
the university never understood database theory very well at all, and
they forgot almost everything just on the end of the final
examination.

The textbook we used didn't have any chapter devoted to database
integrity, only a few pages about the poor SQL declarative integrity
support, and not covered with exercices. The whole Relational Model
was dispatched in five hours or so, and taught with many mistakes and
misconceptions.

The vendor's training materials are usually even worse.

And we also have all that abject oriented programming stuff saying
that RDBMS's are nothing but silly and cumbersome register buckets.

It is not only integrity and normalization. Most developers I know are
not able to write non trivial queries and they load the data in the
applications using simple queries, make several iterations on the
registers, and send the data back to the DBMS.

In the business software industry, technical incompetence is the norm,
and the develpment tools we have are awful.


Regards

Hello Eric,

On 5 oct, 20:30, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I supose you are new in the position ;-)

I have the same experience, and I never have found an IT director who
thinks like you.

The problem is not in modern database theory, the problem is that most
developers don't know the foundations of their profession and common
sense is very uncommon.

In my country most people who develop business systems never read a
database theory book. The few ones who studied a database course in
the university never understood database theory very well at all, and
they forgot almost everything just on the end of the final
examination.

The textbook we used didn't have any chapter devoted to database
integrity, only a few pages about the poor SQL declarative integrity
support, and not covered with exercices. The whole Relational Model
was dispatched in five hours or so, and taught with many mistakes and
misconceptions.

The vendor's training materials are usually even worse.

And we also have all that abject oriented programming stuff saying
that RDBMS's are nothing but silly and cumbersome register buckets.

It is not only integrity and normalization. Most developers I know are
not able to write non trivial queries and they load the data in the
applications using simple queries, make several iterations on the
registers, and send the data back to the DBMS.

In the business software industry, technical incompetence is the norm,
and the develpment tools we have are awful.


Regards

Hello Eric,

On 5 oct, 20:30, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I supose you are new in the position ;-)

I have the same experience, and I never have found an IT director who
thinks like you.

The problem is not in modern database theory, the problem is that most
developers don't know the foundations of their profession and common
sense is very uncommon.

In my country most people who develop business systems never read a
database theory book. The few ones who studied a database course in
the university never understood database theory very well at all, and
they forgot almost everything just on the end of the final
examination.

The textbook we used didn't have any chapter devoted to database
integrity, only a few pages about the poor SQL declarative integrity
support, and not covered with exercices. The whole Relational Model
was dispatched in five hours or so, and taught with many mistakes and
misconceptions.

The vendor's training materials are usually even worse.

And we also have all that abject oriented programming stuff saying
that RDBMS's are nothing but silly and cumbersome register buckets.

It is not only integrity and normalization. Most developers I know are
not able to write non trivial queries and they load the data in the
applications using simple queries, make several iterations on the
registers, and send the data back to the DBMS.

In the business software industry, technical incompetence is the norm,
and the develpment tools we have are awful.


Regards

Hello Eric,

On 5 oct, 20:30, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I supose you are new in the position ;-)

I have the same experience, and I never have found an IT director who
thinks like you.

The problem is not in modern database theory, the problem is that most
developers don't know the foundations of their profession and common
sense is very uncommon.

In my country most people who develop business systems never read a
database theory book. The few ones who studied a database course in
the university never understood database theory very well at all, and
they forgot almost everything just on the end of the final
examination.

The textbook we used didn't have any chapter devoted to database
integrity, only a few pages about the poor SQL declarative integrity
support, and not covered with exercices. The whole Relational Model
was dispatched in five hours or so, and taught with many mistakes and
misconceptions.

The vendor's training materials are usually even worse.

And we also have all that abject oriented programming stuff saying
that RDBMS's are nothing but silly and cumbersome register buckets.

It is not only integrity and normalization. Most developers I know are
not able to write non trivial queries and they load the data in the
applications using simple queries, make several iterations on the
registers, and send the data back to the DBMS.

In the business software industry, technical incompetence is the norm,
and the develpment tools we have are awful.


Regards

Hello Eric,

On 5 oct, 20:30, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I supose you are new in the position ;-)

I have the same experience, and I never have found an IT director who
thinks like you.

The problem is not in modern database theory, the problem is that most
developers don't know the foundations of their profession and common
sense is very uncommon.

In my country most people who develop business systems never read a
database theory book. The few ones who studied a database course in
the university never understood database theory very well at all, and
they forgot almost everything just on the end of the final
examination.

The textbook we used didn't have any chapter devoted to database
integrity, only a few pages about the poor SQL declarative integrity
support, and not covered with exercices. The whole Relational Model
was dispatched in five hours or so, and taught with many mistakes and
misconceptions.

The vendor's training materials are usually even worse.

And we also have all that abject oriented programming stuff saying
that RDBMS's are nothing but silly and cumbersome register buckets.

It is not only integrity and normalization. Most developers I know are
not able to write non trivial queries and they load the data in the
applications using simple queries, make several iterations on the
registers, and send the data back to the DBMS.

In the business software industry, technical incompetence is the norm,
and the develpment tools we have are awful.


Regards

Hello Eric,

On 5 oct, 20:30, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I supose you are new in the position ;-)

I have the same experience, and I never have found an IT director who
thinks like you.

The problem is not in modern database theory, the problem is that most
developers don't know the foundations of their profession and common
sense is very uncommon.

In my country most people who develop business systems never read a
database theory book. The few ones who studied a database course in
the university never understood database theory very well at all, and
they forgot almost everything just on the end of the final
examination.

The textbook we used didn't have any chapter devoted to database
integrity, only a few pages about the poor SQL declarative integrity
support, and not covered with exercices. The whole Relational Model
was dispatched in five hours or so, and taught with many mistakes and
misconceptions.

The vendor's training materials are usually even worse.

And we also have all that abject oriented programming stuff saying
that RDBMS's are nothing but silly and cumbersome register buckets.

It is not only integrity and normalization. Most developers I know are
not able to write non trivial queries and they load the data in the
applications using simple queries, make several iterations on the
registers, and send the data back to the DBMS.

In the business software industry, technical incompetence is the norm,
and the develpment tools we have are awful.


Regards

Hello Eric,

On 5 oct, 20:30, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I supose you are new in the position ;-)

I have the same experience, and I never have found an IT director who
thinks like you.

The problem is not in modern database theory, the problem is that most
developers don't know the foundations of their profession and common
sense is very uncommon.

In my country most people who develop business systems never read a
database theory book. The few ones who studied a database course in
the university never understood database theory very well at all, and
they forgot almost everything just on the end of the final
examination.

The textbook we used didn't have any chapter devoted to database
integrity, only a few pages about the poor SQL declarative integrity
support, and not covered with exercices. The whole Relational Model
was dispatched in five hours or so, and taught with many mistakes and
misconceptions.

The vendor's training materials are usually even worse.

And we also have all that abject oriented programming stuff saying
that RDBMS's are nothing but silly and cumbersome register buckets.

It is not only integrity and normalization. Most developers I know are
not able to write non trivial queries and they load the data in the
applications using simple queries, make several iterations on the
registers, and send the data back to the DBMS.

In the business software industry, technical incompetence is the norm,
and the develpment tools we have are awful.


Regards