Re: Was: what does "serialization" mean?

From: Nick Landsberg (SPAMhukolauTRAP_at_SPAMworldnetTRAP.att.net)
Date: 07/12/04 

Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:57:20 GMT

Edward G. Nilges wrote:

> Nick Landsberg <SPAMhukolauTRAP@SPAMworldnetTRAP.att.net> wrote in message news:<hnKHc.78319$OB3.20323@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>...
>

[SNIP]

>
> In fact, it contributes to reliability to view the maintainers, the
> operators of any system as objects without a psychology (or membership
> in society) who are subject less to human law than statistical
> mechanics such that it is not possible to say they won't screw up.
>
> Thus replication IS a risk.

My experience has been that the probability that this
will happen approaches unity. At some point in time,
either the customer will hire a bozo, or the bleary-eyed
sysadmin will, at 2 AM, click a button or type in a command
followed immediately by the words "oh ***!"

(The customer will naturally blame the vendor for not
protecting their system against that, but that's another
discussion.)

>
> But the risk in a high-end proprietary server is you then become
> dependent upon the willingness of the vendor (or some clown who buys
> the vendor out) not to gouge you for continued support.
>
> Microsoft solutions, of course, pose the same risk. However, note that
> Microsoft's very market leadership (restricted I admit to small
> businesses and American larger firms) means that a larger customer
> basis exists to keep it honest.
>
> Whereas some whizbang vendor of a powerful server with a small
> customer base may elect to gouge each customer in the short term. His
> behavior is less predictable and more suspect to the quantum effects
> of individual greed.
>
> Of course, there's always that loose cannon Ballmer. But again it
> seems there are simply more bodies available at Microsoft to pile on
> Ballmer and give him a wedgie if he gets random.

I would disagree that a larger customer base keeps
Microsoft honest in this regard.

I would venture to say that the unspoken motto of almost
all businesses is:

"When you've got them by the balls, their
hearts and minds will follow."

>
>
>>So, getting back to your WHATEVER above. The first
>>camp would fight you tooth and nail, while the
>>second camp would accept it while possibly ignoring
>>its side-effects. If this were a "canned query"
>>I would personally go with the summary table
>>approach, but in that world, not all queries
>>are canned and one cannot tell ahead of time
>>what query some corporate droid might dream up.
>>
>
> Under the laws of logic we have no duty to support a query such as
> "identify all the data base indexes that do not index themselves, and
> make an index of same".
>
>

Who ever said that the customers were logical?
They all have been led to believe by the
software industry in general and Microsoft in
particular that "computers are magic".

(But that's also a different discussion.)

[SNIP]

NPL 

-- 
"It is impossible to make anything foolproof
because fools are so ingenious"
  - A. Bloch