>From: Joshua Gargus <schwa at fastmail.us>
>Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>To: The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>Subject: Re: relational for what? [was: Design Principles Behind 
>Smalltalk,Revisited]
>Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2007 15:21:48 -0800
>
>What, really?  There are many possible reasons that Google don't use  an 
>RDBMS to index the web: stupidity, arrogance, excessive cost of an  RDBMS, 
>sound engineering decisions, or a combination of these.

I'm not saying Google are idiots.  Clearly not.  I was basically just 
questioning using them as some sort of counter point against RDBM systems.  
I think you could do the same thing they did with a RDBMS, but not on a 
bunch of low end computers.  You would have to spend some cash.

>According to the computer systems research community, Google has  sound 
>engineering reasons for its architecture; they have published  papers at 
>top conferences such as OSDI and SOSP.  See http:// labs.google.com/papers 
>("The Google File System" and "BigTable..."  might be the most relevant to 
>this conversation).

Yes of course.  And look at what they are doing: Fault tolerant systems on a 
large number of commodity boxes.  Almost the opposite of an RDBMS. :)

>That's not rule out the possibility of stupidity, arrogance,  excessive 
>cost, etc..  But it does cast doubt on the unsubstantiated  claim that 
>Google could "do exactly the same thing with a lot less  CPUs".

Well, it would be time consuming (and probably expensive) to prove, but I 
still think the statement is ok.  But it will be big boxes and big CPUs with 
lots of through-put.

>As you mentioned in a follow-up email, this wasn't the paper you  meant.  
>Although it has nothing whatsoever to do with RDBMSes, I  would recommend 
>anyone who has enough free time to learn enough  Haskell to read that 
>paper.
>
>Did you happen to find the intended link?

Yes,
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1896

>Certainly RDBs are essential to the operations of the modern  enterprise, 
>but how much of this is because RDBs are really the best  imaginable 
>approach to this sort of thing, and how much is due to a  complicated 
>process of co-evolution that has resulted in the current  enterprise 
>software ecosystem?

Here I think you envision more religious fervor behind my words than exist.  
It is nothing more then a "toolbox" issue for me.  A problem comes up, what 
is the fastest way to solve it weighed against the suspected length of the 
project and how scalable the solution?  For me there are times I reach for 
the RDBMS.  There are other times I would reach for an OODB (I plan to use 
magma to persist my website).  Or maybe a combination (I am *very* impressed 
of what I have seen from GLORP so far), or maybe just stick it in memory.

Which is going to be the best?  Well it is our jobs as engineers to weigh 
all the factors and answer that question, but for every isolated case.

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