On Thursday 17 Oct 2002 4:03 pm, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Charles,
>
> > as far as I aware, constantly evolving schema is not one of
> > relational databases
> > strengths."
>
> All of the above issues are easily solvable by a SQL expert. "You
> show me somebody preaching about the 'limitations' of relational
> databases, and I'll show you somebody with a poor knowledge of the SQL
> standard, or who is using an inferior SQL RDBMS."
A "constantly evolving schema" is a limitation of an RDBMS to be fair. What
seems to be missed by people who have problems with this is that a constantly
evolving schema is a sign of design problems too. The schema is supposed to
represent the *meaning* of your data - if the schema is evolving your
analysis was incorrect at the start.
How would you feel about a library with "constantly evolving categories" for
filing its books?
Anyway Charles, I agree with Josh's comments and just thought I'd point you at
the following site that has plenty of discussion on relational vs object -
oriented database systems.
http://www.dbdebunk.com/
-- Richard Huxton