From: Eleanor McHugh <eleanor@...>
Date: 2007-03-22T22:07:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Object/Relational Mapping is the Vietnam of Computer Sci

On 21 Mar 2007, at 21:23, ara.t.howard@noaa.gov wrote:
> here at the national geophysical data ceter
>
>   http://ngdc.noaa.gov/
>
> we say that data is useless, only the combination of applications  
> and human
> reasoning can turn it into __information__.  so, with that in mind,  
> i'd say
> that data and applications are useless and that it's only by  
> combining the two
> using logic (aka business rules) that anything meaningful arises.
>
> cast in point : we've 260tb of 'data' sitting in our mass storage  
> device.
> less than 0.01% ever comes back out.  that small percentage is  
> massaged into
> meaningful __information__ via complex application and human logic  
> though and
> it's those kernels we're interested in.

Having trained as a physicist before entering IT I'd say that's a  
different usage of the word 'data' than in this conversation. I'd  
worry about any data entering one of my relational databases that  
didn't pass the basic criterion of being potentially useful  
information - of course it's not provably useful until someone  
performs a query to extract it, so perhaps we should class it as  
virtual information in its stored form... some kind of superposition  
waiting for human intervention ;p

Anyway, if I have the choice between saving my data and saving my  
code - data will win every time.


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason