Thursday, May 25, 2000
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 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 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.
![[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]](https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2023/1023.t.jpg "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades")