> Now, there's another thing that makes it amazingly hard to displace:
> imagining what would be better *enough* to justify the many millions of
> people-years and even more billions of dollars needed to move away from
> it. Despite Date's many whines over the decades, his still-vaporware
> Relational Model doesn't even vaguely approximate that
> criterion.
1) Please understand Date is not a programmer, he is a lecturer,
therefore, he is not undertaking nor does he wish to undertake any
implementation. Ideally, he wouldn't endorse any particular implementation
(but he does- that's his option).
2) Re: "still-vaporware Relational Model"- the relational model is a
mathematical model for data representation. Your comment makes as much
sense as claiming that "Newtonian physics" is vaporware.
3) From your comments, it is clear that you wish to only consider existing
software as proof of usefulness and you are not interested in considering
alternative ideas. This is precisely the difference between a researcher
and a rote programmer. I would rather be someone in between.
Regardless of what you think of the relational model, I would urge you to
be more open-minded, even about "vaporware". Much of the world's most
interesting software has not yet been written.
I'm done with this thread. Good luck.
-M