jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Fri Mar 18 15:21:15 CDT 2011
LOL. Yep, and the strange part of that whole thread is that I have studied all that stuff, though not necessarily all of it in a classroom. I know tuple and relation but it simply isn't used anywhere in the (non-academic) world so why cling to it? All it appears to do is provide a false sense of superiority. If you happen to work at a university and need to discuss these terms on a daily basis with an 80 year old professor who learned that stuff and refuses to use modern terms, then I guess they would be relevant. ;) John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com On 3/18/2011 3:55 PM, Drew Wutka wrote: > "I am happy you like it but I have never actually uttered the word tuple > in my life, it makes no > difference to me. I get along just fine with tables, rows and fields. > I understand what goes in > each of those things. It is second nature (and trivial) to normalize to > 3rd normal. I have read > many though not all of the rest of the 16 normal forms and understood > (at the time I read it) *some* > of them. Most seemed oh so esoteric." -- JWC > > LOL. I'm sure I told this story before, but about a decade ago, when I > started working for my current employer, I started going back to > college. Took an MIS class (Managing Information Services). > > First day of the class, I was sitting in the back, here I am, 28 years > old, with a bunch of people that probably couldn't order a beer. The > teacher starts going into the internet, and TCP/IP. Just going over > basic stuff. He then goes over a very basic description of an IP > address, and asks if anyone knew why each quad of an IP address had > values from only 0 to 255. I looked around, no one was answering, so I > raised my hand. The professor called on me, and I said 'Because that's > 8 bits, or a byte'. Wow, the class looked at me like a herd of deer > mesmerized by headlights! LOL. > > I never studied for any of the tests, and I don't remember if there was > homework or not (I would have done the homework if there was some). I > always got an A on the tests. This stuff was SOOO far below my level of > understanding it wasn't funny, but it was a required course that I > couldn't test out of. On one of the tests the question was: > > What would a relational database developer refer to as a row of data? > > So here I am, taking this test, and employeed full time as a > programmer/developer (with a relational database), and so I answered > 'record' (I think it might have been row). Tuple was in the list of > answers, but honestly, I hadn't read that chapter in the book. > > So when I got my test back, it was the only question I had wrong, so I > went and asked the instructor. His response was basically 'the book > answer is tuple'. I had to laugh at that, because the book also > described Widnows 95 and Windows 98 as 'different Operating Systems', > which the teacher pointed out in class is 'technically' incorrect. > > Drew > The information contained in this transmission is intended only for the person or entity > to which it is addressed and may contain II-VI Proprietary and/or II-VI Business > Sensitive material. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender > immediately and destroy the material in its entirety, whether electronic or hard copy. > You are notified that any review, retransmission, copying, disclosure, dissemination, > or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon this information by persons > or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. > >