Re: 1995 Developers Competition Update - 42 Teams,Japan,Languages Used

You make many interesting points and I would hardly claim that any benchmark, specification, or competition is perfect. Nonetheless, it is not unusual for programmers to have to work from a specification developed by others on a database schema already in existence or built by an analyst (possibly one not as educated in object orientation as the programmer would like ;-) prior to the beginning of coding. If the objective of object orientation is reuse, presumably we can reuse someone else's analysis and design. -- Dennis Moore, Oracle Corp. dbmoore@oracle.com <- Office (preferred for e-mail) dbmoore@netcom.com <- Home (preferred for living ;-) In article <40k1f4$7rc@natasha.rmii.com> cjames@cec-services.com writes: >tom@dcs.pdial.interpath.net wrote with possible deletions: > >| Total cash prizes of $10,000 will >| be awarded the top 3 teams. Gold medals will be awarded the best MultiMedia, >| Object Oriented, Rapid Application Development and Client Server application. > >The specifications for the 1994 competition in fact prohibit _any_ >object-oriented approach. This is because the fields or columns are >blocked, the rows which go into which tables are specified, etc. >Hence it can be _proved_ that a gold medal for Object Oriented >application is a gold medal for something not object oriented. Maybe >this explains why no Ada or Eiffel participants are interested, and >why there is only one team using SmallTalk. > >For an application to be object oriented, the analysis and design >phases would have to be done without being given a canned database >design to implement. In other words, for the application to be object >oriented the analysis phase must determine the problem domain, and the >design phase must determine the solution domain. But the 1994 specs >are just that and prohibit oo analysis or design. Hence the result >would be a SQL solution written in Ada or Eiffel or BASIC or FORTRAN. >If I were a judge, given the 1994 specifications any SmallTalk entry >would be immediately failed because the analysis and design phases are >crucial to oo technology. Furthermore, for a team to demonstrate >proficiency in oo technology would require that they produce a class >library of reusable components with which total strangers must >successfully implement the given specifications. That's not possible. > >The assumptions in the 1994 specifications are also legion. For >example, areas of improvement include normalizing the database >further. But this assumes that the optimum approach is to use a >relational database, rather than anything else. > >A number of the details of the 1993 specification are amateurish. For >example, table names such as TableName (notice the caps) are not used >in any standards. This particular important point is not a matter of >style, but rather of readability established by many disparate >projects, namely, TableName should be table_name. > >I believe the 42 teams are wasting their time on the 1995 competition. > > > > >~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ >Colin James III, Principal Scientist cjames@cec-services.com >CEC Services, 2080 Kipling St, Lakewood, CO 80215-1502 USA >Voice: 303.231.9437; Facs: .231.9438; ISDN: .462.1107 & .1448 >~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ > > -- -- Dennis Moore, Oracle Corp. dbmoore@oracle.com <- Office (preferred for e-mail) dbmoore@netcom.com <- Home (preferred for living ;-)