Skip Lists: A Probabilistic Alternative to Balanced Trees[PDF]. Saw a link to the original skip list paper. I'm not sure whether I've read that one or not. Anyway, if you want to understand concurrency, and the "impending multicore future", skip lists are an interesting thing to consider. Note, the rest of this post assumes a basic understanding of ( Read more... )

The best part about reading blogs and such is that fun little tempests in a teacups come along and you get to play along at home by post to your LJ that no one reads.

So now we've got ORM's are a Thing of the Past(and of course hacker news has a thread), and a fun "rebuttal" from Debasish Ghosh: Are ORMs really a thing of the past?Of course, all ( Read more... )

NoSQL and the Relational Model: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
*yawn*, I can't imagine I have ever said anything similar, oh wait, I did.
But, understanding and being able to think clearly about the logical model behind your data independently of the physical storage model, is and will always be valuable. And the relational model was ( Read more... )

No to SQL? Anti-database movement gains steam.
SQL Databases Are An Overapplied Solution (And What To Use Instead)
Hacker News thread on the topicHonestly, I hope the anti-database, anti-SQL movement really takes hold. On some level, I guess I should ask myself why I respond to things like this. There are several things going on here, and none of ( Read more... )

I saw the title Schemaless RDBMS and got excited. Most of you who know me, know I'm a "relational bigot", and so generally write grumpy entries over someone touting the advantages of other "data models"(usually revealing that they don't actually understand the relational algebra. Math is the ultimate form of Duck Typing. If it acts like a Group, ( Read more... )

One of my interests is in large datasets and dealing with them, and so, I just thought I should share a link to this textbook: Introduction to Information Retrieval. Conveniently enough, it has PDF's of the book on the website. In addition, Greg Linden's blog reviewing the book also mentions Managing GigabytesAnyway, seemed like the sort of thing ( Read more... )