On Jan 4, 2007, at 11:40 AM, J J wrote:
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.
Well, if you say so. I'm no expert.
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?
Thanks, that looks interesting. It actually is related to the original link.
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.
My apologies, I can see how you might read it that way. I'm not saying that you are arguing that RDBs are the best imaginable approach; I was trying to re-state Howard's initial question. As I understood it, the question was not about whether an RDBMS is the appropriate choice in a given situation (given time and cost constraints, etc.), but whether we know enough now to make fundamentally better choices if we magically found ourselves with the resources to "burn the disk packs" and start over.
Josh