Re: Irony

[Jerry Stuckle <jstuckle@attglobal.net>]

On 8/14/2014 8:47 PM, AW wrote:
> 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
> 
> 

Actually, NONE of these are relational searches.  They are only
selecting specific data from a single table.

You need to study up on what a relational model means.  It NEVER
contains just one table, even if that table has multiple columns (and
the database is properly normalized).

A relational model would be something with tables like Customer,
Customer-Account, Account, Account-Transaction, Transaction.

Then selecting all transactions for a specific account.

Jerry