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posted by on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the fun-with-injections dept.

SQL and relational database management systems or RDBMS were invented simultaneously by Edgar F. Codd in the early 1970s. The simple fact that both arrived early in the life of computing, and that for 90% of the time they just work, means databases have become a 'solved problem' you no longer need to think about.

It's like how MailChimp has become synonymous with sending email newsletters. If you want to work with data you use RDBMS and SQL. In fact, there usually needs to be a good reason not to use them. Just like there needs to be a good reason not to use MailChimp for sending emails, or Stripe for taking card payments.

But people do use other other email automation software and payment solutions, just like people use NoSQL databases. Yet even with other database technology available, albeit less mature technology, SQL still reigns and reigns well.

So, finally, here are 8 reasons we still use SQL 43 years after it was first cooked up.

It's clickbait, I tell ya!


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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:21PM (5 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:21PM (#504373)

    and is a prime example of COBOL-esque "Unlight Lamp" syndrome

    How is this a bad thing? "Unlight lamp" reminds me of the text adventures of the early 80s, back when computers actually used to be fun. Now with Windows 10, spyware, ridiculously slow software despite incredibly powerful hardware, and worst of all, flat UIs, computers just aren't much fun any more.

    I remember the days when computers run at under 1 MHz (sometimes well under), yet they could accept keypresses as fast as you could type them. These days, there's a huge, visible lag in typing most of the time, despite CPUs being over 1 or 2 GHz and having tons of extra helper hardware (GPUs, DMA, etc.). Software has gotten so ridiculously bloated that all the performance gains are squandered. Just look at the popular new way of developing desktop apps these days: Electron. "Yeah, let's spin up a whole new web browser for every simple little app!"

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:22PM (4 children)

    by theluggage (1797) on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:22PM (#504412)

    How is this a bad thing? "Unlight lamp" reminds me of the text adventures of the early 80s, back when computers actually used to be fun.

    Sure - its all fun and games until someone gets eaten by a grue. Or you query flies out of the server, collides with the pile of junk mail (haha!) only to be grabbed by a small lower-half-of-the-room cleaning robot*. No, I don't want to have that sort of "fun" when I'm trying to write a query - the underlying logic provides an adequate sufficiency of mental exercise.

    "Natural language" computer languages like SQL, COBOL, VAX/VMS command line invariably fail because they don't really understand natural language and you end up having to memorise the correct commands anyway. Worse, they accept a small number of variations (e.g. glue words like WITH, TO that don't follow any sort of consistent logic about when they're needed) which I find makes it harder to remember.

    I remember the days when computers run at under 1 MHz (sometimes well under)

    Bet you could remember the hex codes for all the commonly used machine code instructions, too... So much for natural language.

    These days, there's a huge, visible lag in typing most of the time,

    Pro tip: Office 2016 actually does that deliberately... I threw up in my mouth a little bit. There's a registry hack to turn it off.

    Electron. "Yeah, let's spin up a whole new web browser for every simple little app!"

    To be fair, that's mainly Because Security: they could all run in a single browser instance if you didn't mind giving Javascript full access to your system...

    *Sorry, I know I haven't got that quite right but I've got a headache and forgot to TAKE ASPRIN. (or was that TAKE ASPRIN USING GLASS... or TAKE ASPRIN USING WATER...?)

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:53PM (2 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:53PM (#504435)

      Bet you could remember the hex codes for all the commonly used machine code instructions, too... So much for natural language.

      No, actually I'm just thinking of the 8-bit microcomputers of the time, plus also the IBM PC, various mainframes, etc. All those things were fast. Maybe not so much at actual computation speed, but they had very low latency for user-interactive stuff usually.

      Pro tip: Office 2016 actually does that deliberately... I threw up in my mouth a little bit. There's a registry hack to turn it off.

      WTF? Why would they do this?

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:19PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:19PM (#504457)

        Because they thought it looked good. However, you can turn it off:

        http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/office-2013-typing-animation-disable [laptopmag.com]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @07:39AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @07:39AM (#504724)

          Strange. My Office 2016 doesn't seem to do that, and I don't have that key. I do however have DisableHardwareAcceleration = 1, so that may be the reason.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:32PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:32PM (#504591) Journal

      To be fair, that's mainly Because Security: they could all run in a single browser instance if you didn't mind giving Javascript full access to your system...

      What is needed is a sandboxed process space. Not necessarily a full browser and all of it is still highly inefficiently designed and programmed.

      On top of that. Javascript is a design error all the way.