Anyone who has ever achieved success has also experienced failure. However, in the moment, we tend to see failure as a bad thing for several reasons, mostly because it is an unpleasant experience. Putting your heart and soul into reaching a goal or a desired result and falling short makes us feel inadequate. Although many may give up in the face of failure, it is those who remain persistent and determined who ultimately become successful in their mission. Throughout time, the most successful people weren’t the ones who just fell into success but those who experienced failure and worked through the mistakes and criticism to achieve success. Read the rest of this entry »

Traditional relational database schemas are designed to keep computers happy. Indexes, foreign keys, joins…all of these tools allow for the highest level of optimization so data can be recorded and read back in record time. However, humans are typically very unhappy when it comes time to answer business questions from this data.

Imagine your boss approaches you and asks for a report of all orders placed by the Acme Corporation on Thursdays. You recall how many times you and your team optimized the database containing this information so data could be written at break-neck speeds and moan when you think of the complex script you’ll need to write to retrieve the report your boss requires. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of lines and lines of arcane SQL, we could ask a database something like the following and get back exactly what we expect? Read the rest of this entry »