No, I believe it makes sense to draw a line. When a person (indeed, even a specialist) claims special insight (including critical insight) of a well-examined problem he is almost always wrong. The physicist John Baez not infrequently encounters cranks who believe they've found errors in relativity theory or quantum mechanics. He has developed a scale for rating cranks:
The OP is wrong in so many ways that it renders his article meaningless. And others have pointed out possible errors (although doing so one must interpret the OP's intentions, a risky endeavor indeed), though certainly not to exhaustion. To add a single specific item of criticism to the fray would only provide yet another handle for the OP or other misled persons to grasp and extend the discussion uselessly.
The human mind can create ideas, phrases, and analogies some of which, upon further examination, are devoid of meaning. Dreaming is an extreme instance wherein most of the ideas later make no sense. However the same thing can happen while fully conscious and is part of the normal creative process.
Mathematics and logic are tools we use for separating empty ideas from useful and meaningful ones. Unfortunately there is no Royal Road to mathematics or logic, nor to relational databases:
I have neither the time, nor the inclination, much less the rhetorical skill to enlighten the OP or this group as to the vagaries of databases.
Nor do I view this as a "rhetorical" discussion: rhetoric is concerned with swaying the populace to your side of the argument whether you are correct or not. I am concerned about what is correct rather than what is popular.
I do not doubt the enthusiasm (or frustration) of the OP, however his complaints are poorly-stated, unclear and orginate from an incomplete understanding of logic and relational databases. Many similar complaints have been stated before (often much more clearly and in a form arguable) in more appropriate venues (e.g., Google for "relational vs OOP group:comp.*"), where they have been thrashed about thoroughly by better, and worse, men than me.
It is one thing to register frustration. But it is another to casually question ideas that have withstood the test of time and cast that questioning as serious.
To show that frustration in the development of databases is nothing new see William Kent's "Data and Reality":
No, I believe it makes sense to draw a line. When a person (indeed, even a specialist) claims special insight (including critical insight) of a well-examined problem he is almost always wrong. The physicist John Baez not infrequently encounters cranks who believe they've found errors in relativity theory or quantum mechanics. He has developed a scale for rating cranks:
http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics/msg/5312a801e0785e...;
The OP is wrong in so many ways that it renders his article meaningless. And others have pointed out possible errors (although doing so one must interpret the OP's intentions, a risky endeavor indeed), though certainly not to exhaustion. To add a single specific item of criticism to the fray would only provide yet another handle for the OP or other misled persons to grasp and extend the discussion uselessly.
The human mind can create ideas, phrases, and analogies some of which, upon further examination, are devoid of meaning. Dreaming is an extreme instance wherein most of the ideas later make no sense. However the same thing can happen while fully conscious and is part of the normal creative process.
Mathematics and logic are tools we use for separating empty ideas from useful and meaningful ones. Unfortunately there is no Royal Road to mathematics or logic, nor to relational databases:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road
I have neither the time, nor the inclination, much less the rhetorical skill to enlighten the OP or this group as to the vagaries of databases.
Nor do I view this as a "rhetorical" discussion: rhetoric is concerned with swaying the populace to your side of the argument whether you are correct or not. I am concerned about what is correct rather than what is popular.
I do not doubt the enthusiasm (or frustration) of the OP, however his complaints are poorly-stated, unclear and orginate from an incomplete understanding of logic and relational databases. Many similar complaints have been stated before (often much more clearly and in a form arguable) in more appropriate venues (e.g., Google for "relational vs OOP group:comp.*"), where they have been thrashed about thoroughly by better, and worse, men than me.
It is one thing to register frustration. But it is another to casually question ideas that have withstood the test of time and cast that questioning as serious.
To show that frustration in the development of databases is nothing new see William Kent's "Data and Reality":
http://www.amazon.com/Data-Reality-William-Kent/dp/158500970...