"This kind of programming is sending us back to the old days of 1950's mag tape files and bit fiddling with assembly language. "

Hi Joe,

In prefacing the article, I could have included the fact that sometimes I like to just "geek" with things, just for the sake of "geeking". You know - Quality Geek Time? However, as I point out often to my students some of those practices in your web article "Ten things that I hate about you" - you have to realize that not everything will be relational, nor will it be in an acceptable normal form. Nor will it be what Dr Codd envisioned. Did he envision blobs in the database? Hardly. Did he envision (gasp) XML data and XML data types? No, not at all.

A toolkit is used most effectively when the appropriate tool is best fit to the job. I did warn that this is not something that should be used all the time, nor is it an attempt to overpower or overcomplicate a solution. I know that it is probably aggravating to you but we have debated things before, and it's good for a lively debate. Remember when I posed a dozen questions to you about NULLs at SQLPass in Grapevine last year? Good, thought provoking arguments make the developer community richer. Blasting a technique that it sends us back to another day ... not so much. Fact is, things change. Did anyone ever think that we'd be using IDENTITY attribute all over creation? Go look at Microsoft's "Best Practice" material - they have them everywhere and strongly recommend them. Normally, I teach my students that 1) they're not relational, 2) they don't describe attributes, and 3) attributes aren't dependent on them. Wonder why they are, then, used so much?

Most of your pet peeves, I've agreed with you. For this one, I do think that there is a use for it, regardless of whether it's 1950, 1960, or 2006!

Oh, and thanks the copy of your book. It's great!