Who Are You?

I was sitting here thinking about the editorial when Kathi Kellenberger came to mind. She would frequently write about her favorite show, Star Trek. I too have been a fan of Star Trek since I was very young. However, my favorite show is a little more obscure and not as many people have seen it, Babylon 5.

Babylon 5 ran for five years and had a couple of feature-length movies and a failed spin-off. The show does a great job within it's budget. The stories are simply wonderful, with good science fiction in some spots, fun fantasy in others. A lot of the charm of the show comes from great characters (and great actors playing them). From the Captain John Sheridan, through his second, Commander Susan Ivanova, to the aliens in the cast, Delenn, G'Kar, Londo Mollari, we had a bunch of very interesting beings, who all had their own motivations, and story archs that saw them transformed over the length of the show. The principal villains, The Shadow, were more than just the heavies. While, the nominal "angels", the Vorlons, might not have the best of intentions for the universe (and the characters). One of my favorite groups in the show are the Rangers ("...We walk in the dark places no others will enter. We stand on the bridge and no one may pass..."). Seriously, if you haven't watched it, it's fun and well worth your time (fair warning, the special effects are dated).

What's that have to do with databases?

Well, it's OK to not be one of the cool kids. Sure, the shiny, Star Trek, stuff is great and all. So everyone and their brother is off in Snowflake or whatever the latest trend is. And yeah, it's actually very good tech. However, you can still be over working on different tech, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, heck, even Oracle. Just as it's OK to like Star Trek, or Babylon 5, without trashing either show, it's entirely possible to work within one technology stack without having to trash the others. Whenever I hear someone dinging on tech, and it's not explicit stuff like, oh, they don't like how T-SQL handles bit operations (just an example, not throwing rocks), but instead, almost a personal attack, I question their capabilities as technologists. You don't have to love the database system you're in, you just have to use it. I mean, I've written multiple books on execution plans in SQL Server, yet, I'm going say it straight up, those things suck. It's hard to get what you need out of them. However, they are the tool we have, and I'm going to use them to the best of my ability, and, I'm going to try to make it easier for others to use them too.

In short, it's fine to be a fan or Star Trek or Babylon 5. It's fine to be a fan of instead of . However, when you get all personal, attacking the other system based on emotional stuff, and trashing those using the other system too, you're just wrong.

I titled this based on one question asked in Babylon 5. I'll close with the second: What do you want?

Grant Fritchey

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