[ZODB-Dev] Re: [Zope3-dev] Re: Community opinion about search+filter

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey Jim,

On 3/27/07, Jim Fulton <jim at zope.com> wrote:
[snip]
> > After
> > that I thought we were actually going somewhere with this discussion,
> > but you now strengthen this impression by apparently giving up in
> > exasparation. That is what is making *me* slightly exasparated. :)
>
> Fine. I gave up because you dismiss literature and theory. You seem
> to imply that "in practice" there is some kind of magic that will
> somehow make sorts go fast despite any theoretical basis. This
> convinced me that further discussion was a waste of time.

I can see how you interpreted my statements that way. My apologies; I
did not intend to dismiss literature and theory nor did I wish to give
the impression that I do.

All I tried to express is that algorithmic scalability is just one
aspect of scalability issues, and lower-level design choices and
constant factors do matter in the final execution. I don't know how
much - getting a rough idea requires the comparisons we talked about,
and I intend to do this at some point. :) And theory clearly puts
upper limits on what is possible, and the upper limits (which are not
as high as people would naively expect). I was assuming you understood
that I understood the fact that theory provides a limit as a given. :)

I realize that there is no way to improve things fundamentally in all
cases, and I realize that writing an easy-enough API that helps
matters in at least some cases will be a challenge.

Regards,

Martijn