Death By Furniture ....oracle

According to www.identifiers.org, there are two classes of relational database: "Code Class" and "Identifier Class".

We hadn't heard of those either, but it's all made clear in this presentation (pdf, 1.2MB), in which the limitations of the conventional approach and a novel approach to schema design are explained without the aid of Powerpoint, in a series of pictures like this one:

Still confused? Never mind, you can follow the debate on this OTN thread, which George begins by asking for a simple clarification regarding the capabilities of the Oracle RDBMS. From the answers to this, he should be able to determine whether Oracle is old-hat Code Class or funky new Identifier Class:

I have an interest in establishing how the Oracle System Catalogues cope with particular changes. I have never used Oracle, but I have carried out the same test on another RDBMS. If I had access to Oracle I would have carried out this test myself.

The test goes as follows.

Create a new database.

Create a new simple table, with just a few columns.

Create a form for the table, and add a few rows.

Rename the table or a column – if you can’t, then the RDBMS is Code Class.

If you can rename the table or a column, then do so, and invoke the form that you used before changing the table or column name. If it doesn’t work, the RDBMS is Code Class; if it does then the RDBMS is Identifier Class.

In an Identifier Class RDBMS changes of column or relation/table name will not interfere with the operation of any form already in place based on that table.

I'll be very grateful if anybody can give me a definitive answer on this, either through already having explored the issue or by running the test.

It turns out that "Code Class" covers all existing RDBMS products ever conceived, and "Identifier Class" is an improved model invented by George himself, in which some theoretical 4GL development tool yet to be designed allows you to change table and column names without breaking existing code or having to define a view, and surrogate keys are, well, pretty much the same except that they are now called attribute independent relative position independent identifiers. Perhaps one day Oracle will advance to this point, especially now that they've fixed DBMS_OUTPUT and must be wondering what to do next (perhaps after getting a product to work on Apple Mac and fixing the OTN "change password" facility). We can but dream.