Fair or Fowl?

Wed Jan 12, 2005 by Brett Kaiser (x002548) in disconnected-ramblings

I think I'll have the Chardonay with that.

But I don't know what to think when Fabian Pascal makes a reference to SQLTeam

http://www.tdan.com/sms_issue31.htm

And doesn't reference the responses in that thread

http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=42060

What would have been fun is if Fabian picked up on the thread where the posted wanted to make sure you could lock out the administrator for a database. THAT was a fun thread....I have to find that and post it here.

But, is it me, or does it seem overly self serving of Fabian?

Legacy Comments


robvolk 2005-01-12	re: Fair or Fowl? Ummm..."self serving" and "Fabian Pascal" are redundant, synonymous, etc. I wonder if there's a way to Google for "Pascal posts something that DOESN'T have a plug for his book"...not that it will return anything.

Jay 2005-01-12	re: Fair or Fowl? We can start a new post and call it "Part II - Pascal is overrated." SELECT 1 FROM Humility WHERE lname LIKE 'Pascal%' (0 row(s) affected)

Brett 2005-01-13	Pascal Article Well, I don't have a problem with the article, just the tone AND the fact that he (or someone that he works with) trolls the Team sote...doesn't post, uses the URL in the article, post some outrageous "intellectual" property (at least he references the poster) and then goes on to regurgate what basically the collective SQLTeam responded to, and with NO reference to the team members who took issue with the original post. That's my first pet peeve. The second is that the answer will always be "it depends". It's not clearly stated in the article, but the inference is towaerd OLAP, but the seems to be conveniently left out. Also, what's the timing of the information. Does an Organization need to know of a change the instant it happens? Is a day lag ok? Can the hierarchy be built overnight and denormalized for ease of display purposes? If it's for the ledger, as long as you book dollars to the correct organization/ Account, does the ability of how the dollars rollup through an organization need to be immediate? The answer to all of these is it depends. AND the answer is that ALL things are doable. It's just a matter of time and money.

Brett 2005-01-13	Google Oh, and Rob, go paste this Pascal posts something that DOESN'T have a plug for his book In to Google and see what you get You might get a kick out of it.

rudy 2005-01-15	re: Fair or Fowl? "just the tone" that's not the only problem with his stuff, but it's one of the more annoying i purposefully don't read him because he's such a loser oh, sure, he's likely right, from a theoretical perspective, but hey fabian, who gives a shit? you're an idiot!!!

Brett 2005-01-15	Alrighty then * Not to censor anything, and I've known Rudy (not personally) for a little while, but I hope to solicite some insightful background on the topic of the type of post Mr. Pascal presented, the manner in which it was presented, and some background on him. Rudy's feelings are clear enough. And of course, there's Rob's thought provoking comments. Anyone else? In the meantime, I'll keep reading. * Ref: Mr. Carey

Brett 2005-01-15	Sorry Jay I didn't mean to leave out that jay has made some allusions as well...Thanks Jay

Jay 2005-01-15	re: Fair or Fowl? The only thing I can add is to say I concur with your observations and to apologize for setting a non-constructive tone with my comment :(

rudy 2005-01-16	re: Fair or Fowl? my apologies please edit my previous reply and replace "hey fabian, who gives a shit? you're an idiot" with "fabian pascal has a well-deserved reputation for incomparable arrogance and unparalleled disregard for other people"

Brett 2005-01-18	re: Fair or Fowl? No, I don't think you can edit...just delete... And I'd rather not I wonder what Celko would have to say? Have those 2 ever met? I'd like to be in the room for that one...

Brett 2005-01-19	Who's JH? If you read the article quickly, you assume that Mr. Pascal wrote it. But it was sent in by someone who's initials are JH. Again, why won't he be more forth coming with his source info. Also, is he portraying in that article, that he did all of the leg work? Are there any concrete examples that can be made? How about some DDL and Some Sample Data with some DML to prove the point you're trying to make. And the last comment as Rudy points out is coming from whom? I believe it to be JH, not Mr. Pascal. Way to cover your ass and at the same time forward the inference that the article is actually from you. When I beleive it is not, not has any leg work been done by you. So the article is mostly irresponsible self promotion with an exit clause. Oh, and I have that book, and I have played with the relational concept. It is a theory and was not meant to be all things to all people. As a matter of Fact Rob Volks article over at SQL Team (More Trees and Hierarchies Part I) discusses the same concept in a totaly different manner. In either case, I believe the issues come down to business rules rather than a technical issue. For example, if A Parent who has tree's of children below it, and the Parent needs to be deleted, do the children get promoted as children to the Parents Parent, or do they in effect "move up the chain", or do the stay where they are? I'm not to sure if that's at all clear, but the point is in when DML operations are made against a tree, the business rules need to be established and implemented. And with Oracle 8i and higher, SQL Server 2005, and DB2 V8, all of the issues are moot because SQL Extensions ( I believe they are extensions, not ANSI) have this ability built in. PS My pet peeve. Pretending to post the Response from Mr. Celko. In any of my sightings of a response from Mr. Celko to a post or an article, they have been nothing short of a manifesto. So I have a hard time believing that Mr. Celko, in defending his work, would reply to JH, "No Shit. You're right". "Sky was yellow and the sun was blue" * * Mr. Jerome Garcia Guess it's all how you look at it, but for something to make sense you'd have to be on Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. MOO

Brett 2005-01-19	Correction >> Oh, and I have that book, and I have played with the relational concept. OK, I meant Hierarchical And I have done mor than just play with the problem. And it can be "Solved" many different ways, which I have done (Before joing SQL Team, or even before knowing who Joe was), and have successfully impleneted these processes in Production environments, with little or no change in their processing models.

Robert Harmon robert_harmon@hotm 2005-06-04	re: Fair or Fowl? I hate to break this to you Brett, but you called him out. You made a specific reference to him at http://forums.devshed.com/t104037/s.html It probably wasn't hard to find your post via a google for the site he maintains, I would assert that surprise would be less than expected on your part. What's interesting to me here is that most everyone who has commented on this blog as well as the sqlteam forum have missed the overwealming issue. The responses seem to be coming from a perspective that normalization causes performance problems on SQL platforms. While I can understand the perspective, I don't believe it to be true. Worse yet, I don't believe it is at the root of the criticism. If you must denormalise for performance (and I personally don't believe this is necessary for the overwhelming majority of performance issues) AND your logical model is correct, the problem is not with your implementation, rather your platform. Truth be told, SQL in any carnation does a terrible job of maintaining logic. As for Mr. Pascal's tone, I tend to read his literature assuming there is no tone. People who deal with logic for a living tend to write in logical manners. Logic doesn't care how you feel. Now that I think of it, neither does that data that you work with every day, nor you're employer's customers. The issue that kicked this entire process off was denormalisation, you've done nothing to defend your position after casting critical remarks to Mr. Pascal. Given all of that, what in this exchange is "fair" and what exactly is "foul"?

Damian (Merkin) 2005-06-06	re: Fair or Fowl? Robert, unfortunately you have missed the overwhelming issue. Most of the regulars here totally disagree with the argument that normalization causes performance problems, and argue this whenever the discussion comes up. The problem with Mr Pascal is that he links to SQLTeam as if SQLTeam is the problem, without reading further to see what is being said by people that actually implement databases rather than write textbooks. We're fighting the good fight here, while being mocked by some ivory tower blowhard with a poor taste in web design.

Spirit1 2005-06-06	re: Fair or Fowl? i guess Fabian is vulcan then ... nice to know... :))

Brett (Not just a Number...huh?) 2005-06-06	re: Fair or Fowl? Robert, What are you talking about? The link you posted has no mention of me. Are you confusing me with Rudy? I'm an American with German background, whilst Rudy is a German Canadian. You find that Fabian's articles have no personal bent and they are all logical? Read Hendrson, Knight, Dalaney, or even the late Dr. Codd. These people and Mr. Fabian have very little in Common. They state Facts, not "Truths". As for defending a "position", I don't believe I put forth an argument one way or another. I was meerley asking what people though of someone who misrepresents something, then goes on to use text and represent as their own. That's plagarism. Oh, and too date (6/6/2005) This blog has been viewed 893 times. Not exactly a flood. Thanks for reading and commenting.

Brett 2005-08-05	Update OK, so it seems this has been looked at at least once a day sinve it's original posting, and has now about 1,000 views.... What's the latest Pascal-ism?

Brett 2006-07-27	re: Fair or Fowl? So, It's been almost a year....is Mrs. Pascal on sabatical?