butlerm

6 ms·

1.
by butlerm 3y ago
> If that's the case, you will have an overhead anyway, the only question being whether it's at the DB level or at the application level. Inserts and updates do not require referential integrity checking if you know that the re
2.
by butlerm 3y ago
Referential integrity problems usually happen due to missing deletes, improper deletes, or references that should be cleared. The overhead of checking for the existence of referred to records in ordinary inserts and updates in application c
3.
by butlerm 3y ago
It is quite common for modern databases to have multiversion concurrency so that writers do not block readers. If you do not your transactions should either be awfully short, you should be prepared to wait, or you should implement dirty rea
4.
by butlerm 3y ago
Orphaned detail records are usually inconsequential, like uncollected garbage. References to anything with an optional relationship should use outer joins as a matter of course. If you delete something that really needs to be there you have
5.
by butlerm 3y ago
Typically you look for orphan rows - the sort of thing ON DELETE CASCADE was invented to prevent. Another thing to check for are records that need to exist but should have references cleared when something else is deleted, e.g. ON DELETE S
6.
by butlerm 3y ago
Large ERP systems do that sort of thing as a matter of course and have for decades now. It does require careful planning and design. I mean AR / AP / scheduling / manufacturing / inventory and so on. The main downside o
7.
by butlerm 3y ago
If you do not particularly care about performance or have a great deal of headroom then database enforcement of referential integrity is great. Alternatively you could just write test cases to check for it and not pay the severe performance
8.
by butlerm 3y ago
Perhaps someone should define a new C compatible threading API to allow C libraries (including glibc or a wrapper around glibc) to work with something other than native pthreads. Such as goroutines or Java threads and so on.
9.
by butlerm 3y ago
It is basically impossible to write general purpose software like compilers, word processors, and layout engines without doing heap allocations. That means either pointers or references, which are difficult to distinguish if you do not enga
10.
by butlerm 3y ago
It is generally speaking difficult to make an efficient implementation of the compiler and/or the virtual machine for many memory safe languages without writing it in a more efficient, statically compiled language like C, C++, or Rust.
11.
by butlerm 3y ago
That would be convenient, and some programming environments have support for that kind of thing already. A hierarchical object valued expression would also be convenient in a different way.
12.
by butlerm 3y ago
The main application for this is where you have detail data for parent records in a snowflake pattern. In that case SQL tends to require a ridiculous number of queries, where common formats like JSON and XML are capable of transferring hier
13.
by butlerm 3y ago
It is possible for telcos to provide point to point or point to multipoint layer 2 permanent virtual circuits (PVCs) from customers to providers or branch offices to home offices, and it used to be common. Frame relay and ATM (asynchronous
14.
by butlerm 3y ago
Making your code run quickly will not help if your software architecture is inefficient or optimized against the customer as so many web applications are these days, for example. There are many commercial web pages that appear and approxim
15.
by butlerm 3y ago
There is a considerable divergence of opinion on that subject. In my view, C++ isn't remotely suitable as a programming language for someone without a healthy understanding of C. Perhaps a dialect of C++ could be developed that was mo
16.
by butlerm 3y ago
Whether tax deductions are subsidies or not depends on whether they are targeted at and benefit particular industries or special interests in a way that others do not qualify for.
17.
by butlerm 3y ago
A libertarian would say that purveyors of poison would face civil and criminal liability after the fact if anyone was harmed.
18.
by butlerm 3y ago
As I understand it, the U.S. does not subsidize petroleum marketers, or at least not very much. Oil companies are generally taxed on net income after expenses and depreciation, same as all other businesses. Plus depletion, which like deprec
19.
by butlerm 3y ago
The cable ISPs are exactly the kind of companies that could use a little regulation under Title II, they are horrible. My point is that government regulation is likely to make costs go up, not down, and cause a certain amount of technologic
20.
by butlerm 3y ago
Net neutrality is largely about blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Treatment of Internet access and transit services under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 is about much more than that, and potentially dangerously so,
21.
by butlerm 3y ago
A dash is definitely not the same as a minus. A hyphen however is so close as to cause a serious ambiguity, so much so that they call the standard character a hyphen minus. So if someone comes along and invents a minus or a hyphen that is
22.
by butlerm 3y ago
If an IME doesn't enter a standard hyphen-minus by default, no matter what the language is, that is basically engineering malpractice. How could anyone not know that would fail hard more often than not?
23.
by butlerm 3y ago
I would love to believe that advertising would go away if only we all paid subscription fees. Cable television tells a different story.
24.
by butlerm 3y ago
I believe in most relational databases you can just alter a column to allow null values and run a series of transactions in the background to set that column value to null, and that will quite effectively free up most of the physical overhe
25.
by butlerm 3y ago
There are few things more important than comprehensive and up to date database documentation. Otherwise you don't even know what your data means. An organization that cannot produce documentation like that is somewhere between amateur
26.
by butlerm 3y ago
I wouldn't design a non-trivial API without doing a data model of some sort, personally, because every non-trivial API exposes one.
27.
by butlerm 3y ago
It has never been standard practice to store the database schema and its history, notes, and documentation in the database, although data dictionaries come close. There are database catalogs that can carry a subset of that information, but
28.
by butlerm 3y ago
Every non-trivial API has a data model, and API stability requires that it be as carefully designed as any database, unless you are going to start rolling incompatible API versions off the photocopier, which is no small task. The entire ide
29.
by butlerm 3y ago
Developers without special training should generally not do database design for the sort of databases that are intended to last decades. It is a similar task to developing a complex file format that is usable twenty years later - not somet
30.
by butlerm 3y ago
Never removing a name is relatively straightforward with views and aliases. Never breaking it is somewhat harder, but is still possible for well designed tables - especially if you use updateable views. Never reusing a name is also straight

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