Steve.Cornelius (8/3/2011)
I see very little of value in this article. The readers are ever so slightly better informed after reading it, but have acquired no useful information. In fact if your conclusions, or lack thereof, are to be believed no decisions should be altered based on the entire topic. As such wouldn't it have been better not to publish it and thus save us all the time spent reading it? This strikes me as the sort of irrelevant waffle published by academics that gives academia a bad name.Before your next article please try to establish that the topic is worth reading about before writing about it.
Why so harsh Steve? It's a "Stairways" article. All writers must consider their target audience. I thought the article was a great primer on bookmarks, indexes and heaps. The three guidelines laid out regarding choosing a clustering key are critical to remember. Even veterans can use some re-enforcement of the fundamentals from time to time. I thought the article was great!
There are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue is taught by the whole community.
--Plato