Database Quotes

I'm an oracle of the past. I can accurately predict up to 1 minute in the future, by thoroughly investigating the last 2 years of your life. Also, I look like an old database – flat and full of useless info.

~ Will Advise

Database Management System [Origin: Data + Latin basus low, mean, vile, menial, degrading, ounterfeit.] A complex set of interrelational data structures allowing data to be lost in many convenient sequences while retaining a complete record of the logical relations between the missing items. -- From The Devil's DP Dictionary

~ Stan Kelly Bootle

I’m sure when you run it through the interweb just now, or if you are from a military ship, through your own database – you will see that you have stumbled across a relic of one of those great mysteries of deep space, and probably one of those missing ships people like to write spooky stories about. Well, whatever they wrote, buddy, they got it wrong. You can take it from me.

~ Christina Engela

Biological databases impose particular limitations on how biological objects can be related to one another. In other words, the structure of a database predetermines the sorts of biological relationships that can be 'discovered'. To use the language of Bowker and Star, the database 'torques,' or twists, objects into particular conformations with respect to one another. The creation of a database generates a particular and rigid structure of relationships between biological objects, and these relationships guide biologists in thinking about how living systems work. The evolution of GenBank from flat-file to relational to federated database paralleled biologists' moves from gene-centric to alignment-centric to multielement views of biological action.

~ Hallam Stevens