Re: Irony

[AW <debian.list.tracker@1024bits.com>]

On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 09:11:19 +0900
Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> wrote:

 > When you're grep- or sed-searching a textual log file, you don't care
 > whether all the log entries fit any particular relation or structure
 > definition, and you don't have to think sideways to search on the
 > keywords buried in the text of the actual log entry.

Of course you think sideways...
Step 1. Choose a log to view
Step 2. Decide which time frame you want to view.
Step 3. Decide which column is important to you.

These are all relational searches.  The fact that you decide as a human does
not make the data non-relational.  It should be very clear that log data are
strongly relational.  They conform to all the ideas regarding relational data,
and you follow relational logic to retrieve the parred down snippet of data you
wish to view.  As far as keywords go, which column in an apache log shows the
referrer?  Which one shows the date?  Aren't these precisely keyword searches?
In fact, awk with grep usage is very similar to a database 'select' statement...
except the user must already know what the column headers are, as that
information is not available as it would be in an sql database...

--Andrew