Posted: Jun 20, 2008Nulls vs. Default Values: For and Against Multi-Valued Logic.

Beginning in the mid '90s, I had several published debates with Chris Date and his colleagues. The first exchange was about nulls vs. default values. With Dr. Codd, I believe that nulls should be part of the logical machinery of RDBMSs. Date and company disagreed with me then. They still do.

This debate was carried out in the pages of the magazine Database Programming and Design, one of the earlier manifestations of the current magazine Intelligent Enterprise. Those articles are no longer available in the archives of that magazine, and while Date has reprinted/reworked his arguments in several later books, all but one of my articles in that exchange are effectively unavailable at the present time.

Posted: Jun 20, 2008Written: Jan, 2003Pascal and Date - Personal Remarks.

Over the years, I have noticed that C. J. Date, and some of his associates, seem unable to discuss the positions and arguments of those who disagree with them without at the same time making inappropriate personal remarks about the authors of those positions and arguments. In several cases, it has seemed to me that those personal remarks border on invective, and in the article Logical Tables, Physical Files and Flaws in Relational DBMSs, I said so. Being challenged to back up my claims, I did so by writing this article.

Posted: Jan 13, 2008Published: Dec, 2002. DM DirectLogical Tables, Physical Files and Flaws in Relational DBMSs: Fabian Pascal vs. the Original Source Material.

A summary of my earlier publications in which I explained how relational theory and its implementation in RDBMSs fail to support full independence of logical from physical representations of data.

I compared some more recent work by Fabian Pascal to my original work, and given that no reference was made to my work, was disturbed by the parallels I found. Earlier, in one of his Database Writings books, I had also found that Date had reprinted several articles he wrote in an exchange he had with me in the pages of Database Programming and Design on the topic of nulls, multi-valued logic and default values. Fair enough. But once again, although those articles were written in direct response to my articles on the same topic, Date carefully excluded any mention of my name or my work. I found, and still find, this pattern of disrespect towards me, and towards other authors who dare to disagree with Date and his associates, simply petty.