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[OM] Re: My proposed database fields

Subject: [OM] Re: My proposed database fields
From: Manuel Viet <oly@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 12:56:11 +0100
Le lundi 11 Décembre 2006 11:45, Moose a écrit :
> Chris Barker wrote:
> > Heh!  I am just looking through "PHP & MySql for Dummies", learning
> > about the structure of SQL databases thinking that it looks rather
> > similar to horrid old Acc*ss :-)

Any database engine able to split records among tables looks about the same 
from a casual viewpoint. But Access is horrid because it's a kludge, not 
because databases are horrid. I prefer postgresql over MySQL, myself, because 
there are less proprietary extension in pgsql.

> Structured Query Language is a tool for extracting data from databases,

Not to nitpick, but it's much more than that ; SQL is the product of more than 
10 years of fundamental researches at IBM in the 60s in the field of formal 
grammars and other fun subjects, so to call it 'a tool' is a bit understated. 

SQL is a true work of beauty. So friendly anyone can ask any database anything 
in near regular english from a teletype (an electronic typewriter hooked on a 
serial port) ; so complex no database engine I know of has yet implemented 
the standard fully, not even Oracle.

> Access can also create SQL queries for use against other databases.

This is something I can't understand. SQL is tailored for human use. Computer 
generated requests are suboptimal, and it's not like SQL is difficult to 
master from a user perspective (I'm not talking about database administration 
here). So why fiddle with that layer of dumbification ? 

Some years ago, outside of the scope of my normal activities, I was asked by 
my superior if I could possibly get some data back from a very big info 
system (I'm intentionaly vague on exact circumstances, I just shall say this 
sytem hold sensitive personal data on many people including children) ; so I 
said, ok, I'll peek a look. And I discovered the whole database was a really 
silly collection, never vacuumed, and basically without control. In fact it 
was so dumb that if you used anything to access the sql server but the 
official frontend, you had full access over everything (including staff 
salaries, budgets, etc.). So I fired from memory a couple of sql requests, 
found the needed data, and made a small demo afterward to show what I thought 
of the system. Exposing the biggest salary in the process. And afterward, 
guess who was in trouble ?

Yep, you get it ; it certainly wasn't the pig who made the system with a sql 
generator. But nevermind, I was holding them so tight with this that the 
whole thing settled down on its own. 

-- 
Manuel Viet
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