David King David King ArsDigita : Community member A member of the ArsDigita community since June 13, 1999 If you were to log in, you'd be able to get more information on your fellow community member. Static Page Comments June 13, 1999, on Data Modeling: "instead of the clean query where approved_p is forced into where approved_p = 't'. " 'where approved' is about 1000 times cleaner, IMHO. Don't leave trailing garbage, even if it's from something kewl like LISP. -A mathematician passionate about 'less is more'.- August 18, 1999, on SQL for Web Nerds: Thanks for the online SQL tutorial. I like your style. Forgive such towering ignorance, esp. in an MS: Comp. Eng. (Stanford), but what exactly is "Aol Server"'s role? What does it do? You call it the 'database client'. In my mind's model, a user click on one of your web pages calls up a tcl script which packages queries to Oracle, does other procedural stuff, then formats the results into html and ships it back to the user. Where does AOL server come in? ---change of subject---- To my mind, SQL is klunky and incomplete, requiring kludged patching into procedural languages (after it has become obvious to everyone that they are still needed), to fill the prodigious gaps. It seems to me what is needed instead of SQL are some high-level operators for tables (and perhaps some other data structures), _built into_ a good ol' procedural language; something like what object-orientation was trying to get at before it also got too klunky, or like what APL did for vectors and arrays.... September 14, 1999, on Envisioning a Site That Won't Be Featured In suck.com: Yes, please put the "Next Chapter" link at the bottom of the comments section too, Philip. Thanks. I am still reading 'the-book' and learning new technology, but my spotty CS career goes back to 1970. Here are some ideas for expanding web computing in the future: Might it be possible some day to put X-server-like capabilities into Netscape/Ultra-Xd-Out-Html? Appropriately leaned down, of course, and confined within browser windows. Obviously there are bandwidth restrictions. By 'lean' I mean, e.g., as little overhead as possible for delivering mostly text, but with the possibility to send window/graphic drawing instructions too. And web-server-side applications continuing to run, sending data streams to Netscape and receiving key/mouse-events. Anyone wanna bet that this will happen in some form? (Perhaps it wont even have to suck air like Java applets do :-)-; (