WingedPanther

Microsoft's SQL Server (I use 2000) and
Oracle (I use 9i) are two of the best-known commercial databases, so
an interesting question becomes, what's the difference? In some
ways, not much. In others, a LOT. One of the major differences is
the price, Enterprise is $24,999 for SQL Server vs $47,500 for Oracle. However, you have
to realize that SQL Server requires a Windows machine to run, so
there is still that license to consider.

Once ...

Compared with both Oracle and SQL Server, Access is an absolute joke.  The reason is because it was never intended to be an enterprise-class database.  It was meant to be a support tool as part of the MS Office suite.  It provides minor reporting, minor interfacing, and easy database design.  It's a database for people who don't know how to use databases.

Here's where the problem comes: You are strongly discouraged from running SQL statements in Access (the native interface ...

Here's the first thing to understand:
you are never designing a database in isolation.  Before
you can talk about designing a database, you have to design an
application.  The application will drive the design of the
database, but there will be some impact in the other direction. 
So, to talk about designing a database, let's look at an example
application: A forum.

Please be aware, there is nothing ...

Writing tutorials, especially on topics you only feel about 90% on, is a wonderful thing to do. The reason I say this is simple: you will learn as part of the process. As an example, when I initially wrote the fuzzyset implementation, I did it as a template. I quickly realized I was having problems and backed off to the string-based version (following a recommendation in one of my books).

I learned something very important: templates are trickier than I gave them credit for. However, ...

One of the best ways to create massive piles of frustration is for a programmer to attempt to communicate with a non-programmer.  This happens for a very simple reason: programmers have this unreasoning refusal to take a general description of what is desired and make it happen.  After all, the details can be ironed out later.

OK, being a little more serious: programmers and non-programmers come from vastly different worlds.  Programmers deal with a world of exacting detail, ...

I'm going to introduce you to two wonderful flowcharting programs.  The first is dia, the second is Dynamic Draw.  Dia is a great program modelled after Visio that is cross-platform.  It has an intuitive interface.  If you read the documentation, however, you find relatively few diagrams.  By contrast, Dynamic Draw is a Windows-only program with documentation that appears to be machine-translated from Japanese.  It includes numerous diagrams and how-tos.

In the ...

This question comes up in a variety of ways, from students in a programming class trying to figure out the key to being successful, to programmers trying to figure out why they seem to be different,  to programming teachers trying to figure out how to steer their students in the right direction.  Here's my take on the question.

1) A programmer is a person who can think in detail.  One of the marks of people who do poorly at programming is difficulty thinking in detail.  ...