Ben Bradlee, the former editor of the Washington Post died recently. A famous speech of his from 1997 contains some words that mean something for me. It starts like this
"Newspapers don't tell the truth under many different, and occasionally innocent, scenarios. Mostly when they don't know the truth. Or when they quote someone who does not know the truth.
And more and more, when they quote someone who is spinning the truth, shaping it to some preconceived version of a story that is supposed to be somehow better than the truth, omitting details that could be embarrassing.
And finally, when they quote someone who is flat out lying...."
and summarises with
"Where lies the truth? That's the question that pulled us into this business, as it propelled Diogenes through the streets of Athens looking for an honest man. The more aggressive our search for the truth, the more people are offended by the press. The more complicated are the issues and the more sophisticated are the ways to disguise the truth, the more aggressive our search for the truth must be, and the more offensive we are sure to become to some. So be it."
before ending
"I take great strength from that now, knowing that in my experience the truth does emerge. It takes forever sometimes, but it does emerge. And that any relaxation by the press will be extremely costly to democracy."
Who would have thought that his words apply so well to PostgreSQL and the cost of data integrity? Yes, referential integrity does have an additional performance cost to make it work right, but how else can we be sure that we are passing valid data around? Surely the purpose of a database needs to be primarily a home for the truth, verified to be so by cross checks and constraints. (to be continued)
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