Prologue

I am in France right now. From time to time, I see new words that either I don’t understand or misinterpret the real meaning. Yes, there are words with multiple meanings. For example the word ‘le sens’ could either translate into ‘the direction of traffic’ or ‘the meaning of a word’. Even though, the English word ‘advantage’ translates into ‘l’avantage’, the French prefers using ‘l’inconvénient’ for ‘disadvantage’. Moreover, the romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, and Romanian) have no superlative words, e.g. “good, better, and best”. They use “bon, meilleur, et le meilleur”.

As the world becomes more and more globalized, the demand for language localization grows accordingly. Translating technical words is a truly interesting experience. See the following table.

As the above table shows, the German and the English logics are pretty similar, aside from capitalizing every noun and building long words. But, the romance languages (French, Spanish, etc) employ reverse logic, emphasizing the noun and placing it before the adjectives. Of course, Chinese, aside from using hieroglyphs, the logic is surprising similar to English.

Could we say that other cultures and civilizations have made poor judgments and erroneously translations? Is that really the cause for the superiority of English language, which is currently the dominant language for the field of information technology? Can someone please show me a dominant programming language of which the syntax is based on a non-English language, e.g. Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Hindu, etc?

Now, these are interesting questions, some of which are beyond the scope of this article, as I have yet to learn Arabic, Hindu, and Sanskrit. Let’s look back at the history; Chinese are quite proud for having documented evidences that they invented the gunpowder, the compass, the paper on which is used for printing, and the printing process. Yet, during the last several hundred years, those are not the domains which the Chinese civilization dominated. Furthermore, the Arabs excelled in the astronomy, around the time when Europe was still under the Dark Ages. Yet, it was Christopher Columbus who saw the future by crossing the Atlantic Ocean and led the path for colonizing the new world. Moreover, it was the people of the Hindus valley who had developed the initial concept of Zero as a number. Yet, it was Isaac Newton, a man born in an island nation far away from India, who developed Calculus.

Ironic, isn’t it!

Now, let’s go back to the 1^st topic, information technology, and focusing particularly on the data & the storage. The database is the foundation of modern day software. One can hardly imagine a situation where a sophisticated application runs without using it, whether it is in a giant server-farm (virtual or physical), in mobile devices, e.g. smart-phones & iPad, or on smart credit cards, e.g. “la carte plus” which contains a chip for storing data. Yes, data is everywhere. Tools for manipulating information are everywhere, whether it is called Business Intelligence (BI), or Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), or the contextual web (intent-based searching using user profile information).

It has become clear that the means for analyzing data is as important, if not more, than the storage. You can give a Stradivari violin to a football player. But, if he doesn’t know how to fiddle, it would be quite useless; and, the noise can hurt your ears.

The Database Management function has been historical a distinct role in IT organizations. The DBAs are experts who are responsible for creating schemas, backing up data, and maintaining DB’s integrity. It is hard work. With the database growing evermore sophisticated, the complexity grows accordingly. It’s not hard to observe that the spiraling cost of hiring more proficient DBAs is denting the IT budget. Having many chefs in the kitchen is another interesting byproduct.

A better approach is needed. Cloud computing virtualizes vital computation resources, e.g. the storage, the processor, the bandwidth, etc. Those resources are managed by a team of experts. Spreading the cost of knowledge and responsibilities for managing data across multiple organizations is clearly the very first advantage. Furthermore, the collective intelligence of the community or the communities is clearly greater than an individual. Perhaps, it was Isaac Newton who discovered the gravity. But, it was a team of experts, scientists, engineers, visionaries, and workers, who built the rocket, which landed the first man on the moon, making that “a small step for man, {but}, a giant leap for mankind.”

Analysis

Rather than saying the translations were incorrect, it would be better taking advantage of the situation and consider it as an opportunity for improvements. After all, an application, ‘un logiciel’, is really a means for interacting with the end-user. The focus should be on developing something that is really useful rather than spending all the energy and time troubling over where to put the stuff. Furthermore, it is probably true that 80% of the database schemas in common applications are the same. If there is a cross-cutting (behavior based data management tool), the cloud DB is that.

I remember seeing the following lines somewhere, although cannot exactly remember in which language. “Perfect information did not exist in the past. Building flawless plans is my current goal. And, when we reach absolute perfection in the future, we will be in heaven.”