Jim Starkey napsal(a):

>
> No, Paul, I think we're being radically creative. At least that's my
> intention. A cloud is a new platform that requires new solutions and a
> new way of thinking. Time to give poor Mr. Darwin a rest and take a big
> leap (though the famous scene from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"
> does come to mind).

That's very encouraging to hear, as I agree that we're at the beginning
of new era in data management. But although it's nice to see you
involved in an attempt to initiate the big leap in data management
technology, I'm a little bit disappointed in what direction you're going
as taking your track record into account, I thought that you would be
more "radical" in creativity. It seems that while Nimbus puts in rest
some historical baggage (which is all good and nice), it still follows
the "old" school of data management, just reincarnated for modern
hardware and scalability needs. Don't take me wrong, that's all great,
nice and much needed, but really not much exciting.

You wrote: "I believe that the relational model has passed the test of
time and is organization of choice, other things being equal. The
hierarchical, network (CODASYL), and "object oriented" database have all
died while relational systems have thrived. The issue is not the model
(though I prefer semantic extensions) but the implementation."

You're correct in your observation, but that doesn't validate the
relational model as the right one for future. In fact, the relational
thinking and the necessity to provide relational SQL layer on top of any
"new" design to just satisfy current developer's habits and market
expectations or desperate attempts to graft any new design/model on top
of relational model is the biggest obstacle to such big evolutionary leap.

The main problem with the relational model is that we're at the verge of
handling complex models described by huge and complex semantic
definitions and introduction of ontologies into standard data management
that relational model (even if we would dump SQL with it's closed world
assumption for good) can't handle sufficiently even with sophisticated
semantic extensions.

The second problem of relational model (which is in fact more or less
common problem of all current data management technologies, Nimbus
included) is that's designed to work best with "basic" (or at least
limited set of) data types (that are then formed into relations,
classes, whatever) we all know and use for ages (although with
occasional extension or improvement to make it worse), while it's
starting to be clear that we need a better way to represent/encode
information in our data stores (hint: unified recursive class/type
definition and composition). Not to mention the necessity to have better
query language than that bloated yet incomplete fossil called SQL. But
inertia is a b*tch.

The irony is that it seems that the network (CODASYL) model is more
close to our current and future needs that relational ever would be.
Certainly it has to be taken to modern age of RDF/OWL and LinkedData,
but it still seems to be better starting point for implementation design
than relations (but I love to be proved wrong here). Combine it with
power of implementation as cloud & grid hybrid (pure cloud is not
enough), make it open for everybody to get it adopted (a real show
stopper, I know) to power the semantic web revolution in age where
desktop and net melts into one colorful mashup, and then you would
really have *something* and ground breaking. In fact, a real Google killer.

But don't take me too seriously, as I'm known to be a victim of cross
discipline studies which means that I really don't know a thing about
anything :-) I also realize that although Nimbus is not so ground
breaking, it's innovative enough to be very useful and more than well
marketable.

best regards
Pavel Cisar
IBPhoenix