The spatial addition is huge. I need to figure out how to model irregular polygons in the database. Zip codes, towns, states, countries, etc.

As to the weekend, I seriously suggest spending time with friends and family. Life needs balance.

Wow, that is balance! I think you need to go to Triumph in Princeton and grab a beer. And then go home and read whitepapers.

As to the spatial stuff, I think it would be useful if there was an easy way to put in known territories into the database. I mentioned zip codes, but I think political territories would be extremely useful. New Jersey, Mercer county, Princeton Township. Things along those lines.

Does anyone know of how an oddly shaped territory like New Jersey gets modeled/created in the database? I've done some searches, but I haven't seen anything along those lines. Not everything in life is a rectangle. Although, like computer graphics, I suppose one could model irregular shapes with lots of little polygons.

This point of view is quite interesting coming from sql server white papers. The devil is in the details:)

SQL Server 2008 Product Overview

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/sql2008Overview.mspx

'A trend among database developers is to define high-level business objects, or  

entities, that they then map to the tables and columns stored in a database. Rather than programming against tables and columns in a database, developers use high-level  entities such as ‘Customer’ or ‘Order’ to represent the underlying data. The ADO.NET Entity Framework enables developers to program against relational data in terms of such entities. Programming at this level of abstraction is highly productive and allows developers to take full advantage of entity-relationship modeling.'

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft Data Platform Development

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/sql_2008_dp.mspx

'Developers often spend countless hours deciphering database schemas and writing

complex queries to retrieve the data that they need in their applications. The ADO.NET Entity Framework simplifies these tasks and enables developers to focus on the business logic of their applications.'

'The ADO.NET Entity Framework, which is based on the Entity Data Model, enables  

developers to transform the relational data in database schemas into conceptual entities that can be used directly in applications. For example, the customer data in your application may be stored across multiple tables in a database. By using the ADO.NET Entity Framework, architects and developers can define a single conceptual customer entity that neatly abstracts the complex relations that are required to access and update customer data from an application. This layer of abstraction isolates the data access logic into a set of well defined entities that can be used in an application and the abstraction helps developers to concentrate on developing the application logic.'

Apparantly the devil like to wear 'white' dresses as well as blue dresses :)

Oh yes, from the devil himself, Bill Gates: :)

"You should be able to do things on a declarative basis," Gates continued. But this has not caught on partially because of weak data models -- first Codasyl and then relational. Stronger data models since have emerged, such as rich schemas around XML as well as modeling work being done by Microsoft and others, Gates said. "We're bringing the data models up to be much, much richer, and we think in that environment, a lot of business logic can be done in a declarative form. Now, we haven't totally proven this yet. We're doing a lot of internal developments ourselves that way," including some Microsoft business applications, he said.

From:

InfoWorld

'Gates talks up declarative modeling language effort'

http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/08/02/11/gates-declarative_1.html

Now connect all the dots including those in the white papers. There's a very big picture here, is anyone listening? :)

Great collection of links and i read your blog often, and thanks for refering to Bob's blog. Learned a lot today!