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                        Captain Napalm vs. the Databases
                                        
I had written a rather long and involved rant on why I hate databases. Upon
re-reading it I came across sounding whiny. Way to whiny so I'm scrapping it
and doing a recap here.

I hate databases. Primarily because I just don't understand the mindset
behind them. It seems that the concept of “dumping” a database (extracting
the data in a format suitable to put into another database) is not a concept
that the database boys have. My friend Mark [1] looked at me funny when I
even mention doing such a thing.

“Just question it,” he kept going. “Tell it what data you want.”

“All the data,” I kept saying.

“You don't want all the data,” he said.

“That's precisely what [the developer of the database package I was using]
kept saying. ALL I WANTED WAS THE @#$!#$ DATA! What's so wrong with that?”

“Because you don't want or need all the data,” Mark kept saying. Our friend
Kelly [2] agreed with Mark. “You need to let go this silly notion of having
to know the exact layout and contents of everything.”

Like I said, it's totally alien to me. They also kept asking me what package
was used to create the database and that I could use SQL to obtain the data.
I had no clue as to what library or package was used to create the database—
all I was told was get the data. Why can't I just get the data?

Why is that so difficult for database weenies to comprehend?

This is one reason why I hate the damned things.

[1] http://www.conman.org/people/myg/
[2] http://www.din.net/~kelly/

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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