On 4/9/12 9:10 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
> On 4/9/2012 7:17 AM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>> The desire of RDBMS vendors to lock-in customers ultimately rammed ODBC
>> down a predictable technology cul-de-sac.
> Please note the timing of the ANSI\SPARC conceptual schema: 1978.
> The R& D that led up to that occurred during the height of the
> "database wars" among the firmly established IMS (hierarchical),
> the proposed standard CODASYL DBTG (network), and the new upstart
> relational DBs.
>
> Even within IBM, the big cash cow was IMS, and there was a huge
> internal battle between the firmly entrenched IMS and the research
> guys. Even today, there are a lot of customers who still run
> their old IMS DBs. (01)
Absolutely! And they may never ever go away either. A functional DBMS is
a really hard thing to replace, wholesale. You only understand and
appreciate this reality if you've worked in enterprise setups where DBMS
usage is beyond the proof of concept stage. (02)
As you know, many (esp. Semantic Web community) haven't really
experienced a functional DBMS that drives an enterprise, basically the
equivalent of its heartbeat. Thus, this reality isn't at the fore front
of decision making re. specs and their associated narratives. (03)
>
> The goal of supporting interoperability among those systems was
> a very high priority, and it involved exactly the same kinds of
> problems that we are faced with today. And the work continued
> with the ISO TR9007 in 1987. (04)
Yes. (05)
Then you also have the SAG (SQL Access Group) CLI which tried to at
least standardize access to RDBMS data via SQL en route to the Microsoft
port that's known as ODBC today. (06)
>
>> Thus, today we have better context and technology for making the
>> ANSI/SPARC conceptual schema idea of yore a contemporary reality.
> Yes, but it could have and should have been much better. (07)
Yes! (08)
The DBMS vendors worked hard to protect what they saw as forces that
would relegate their products to commodities. Unfortunately, the
emergence of the Web introduced a set of dynamics that have come to
magnify the myopia inherent in DBMS vendor thinking. Today, DBMS vendors
collectively find themselves challenged in a world where exponential
growth applies to the following: (09)
1. data volume
2. data velocity
3. data format variety (heterogeneity)
3. data location (source) disparity. (010)
> We're
> just beginning to dig ourselves out of some disastrous decisions
> from the late 1990s. (011)
Yes, and you are being kind when you say "disastrous decisions.." I
bluntly refer to this DBMS vendor "myopia".
>
> I like the vision that Tim B-L presented in his book. But the
> Semantic Web was hijacked by two groups who were pursuing the
> worst kind of *technology driven* design:
>
> 1. The XML crowd, whose goal was *XML everywhere* despite the
> fact that the only practical experience with *ML languages
> was for formatting documents and for linking HTML. There was
> *zero* understanding of how to design XML-based languages.
>
> 2. The decidability crowd, who had been proving theorems about
> decidability since the 1930s and about computational complexity
> since the 1970s. But practical programmers ignored them. Their
> goal was *revenge* -- ram decidability down the throats of all
> those unwashed programmers. (012)
Yes, it's why I make the comment: TimBL != W3C. (013)
I have a good understanding of what TimBL seeks. I rarely recognize the
same vision precision in W3C specs and associated narratives. As you've
indicated repeatedly, the narratives are inherently provincial which
simply leads to unnecessary marginalization at a time when we should be
pulling a broad spectrum of "brain trusts" together. (014)
>
> Please note that neither of these two groups had any commercial
> successes of any kind. (015)
Tell me about it! (016)
> Netscape was one of the pioneers in the
> promotion of XML, and they made the disastrous decision to build
> version 5.0 on top of XML. (017)
Yes! (018)
> And it drove them into bankruptcy.
> They donated the pieces to the Mozilla foundation, which finally
> made the browser successful (because it's free).
>
> Today, I happily use the XML-based products from Mozilla,
> Open Office, and now Libre Office. But they are still using
> XML for the sweet spot: formatting documents. That's good. (019)
Yes. (020)
>
> For data formatting, there is some use of XML, but JSON is
> rapidly replacing it. And JSON, by the way, was designed by
> Netscape as part of JavaScript. If they had stuck with their
> winner, they might still be in business today. (021)
JSON will help XML return to its sweet spot.
>
> As for decidability, I strongly urge every programmer to take
> a course in decidability and computational complexity. But
> programmers have discovered very good methods of controlling
> complexity by using structured design methods. Similar kinds
> of structured design can be used to control complexity in
> knowledge representation. People in AI have over 50 years
> of research and practice in doing that. (022)
Yes. (023)
>
> As for description logics, the most successful were LOOM and
> PowerLOOM. But their designer, Bob MacGregor, said very
> clearly: customers always ask for more expressive power;
> they *never* ask for decidability. And he was right.
>
> In summary, the vision for the SW was good. But that vision was
> destroyed by the worst kind of technology-driven design. (024)
Yes, because they believe in design by committee and the committees are
dominated by folks from academia, rather than industry :-( (025)
>
> John
>
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> (026)
-- (027)
Regards, (028)
Kingsley Idehen
Founder& CEO
OpenLink Software
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