What? That's what relationship databases are for. And seven is nothing. Properly indexed, that's probably super-super-fast.

This is the equivalent of a C programmer saying "dereferencing a pointer, ugh". Or a PHP programmer saying "associative arrays, ugh".

I think this attitude comes from a similar place as JavaScript-hate. A lot of people have to write JavaScript, but aren't good at JavaScript, so they don't take time to learn the language, and then when it doesn't do what they expect or fit their preconceived notions, they blame it for being a crappy language, when it's really just their own lack of investment.

Likewise, I'm amazed at people who hate relational databases or joins, because they never bothered to learn SQL and how indexes work and how joins work, discover that their badly-written query is slow and CPU-hogging, and then blame relational databases, when it's really just their own lack of experience.

Joins are good, people. They're the whole point of relational databases. But they're like pointers -- very powerful, but you need to use them properly.

(Their only negative is that they don't scale beyond a single database server, but given database server capabilities these days, you'll be very lucky to ever run into this limitation, for most products.)

> The Amazon contract will be a much-needed financial boost to the Postal Service, which continues to bleed red ink as more Americans eschew "snail mail" in favor of email, instant messaging and social networks. The agency, which said it expects to lose around $6 billion this year, has been closing locations and has proposed ceasing Saturday delivery of many items to cut costs.

But the USPS is, operationally speaking, profitable; it makes about $400M in operating profit per year. So where does the $6B loss come from? It turns out that the overwhelming chunk of USPS expenses are due to a 2006 Congressional mandate that forces the agency to prepay for 75 years of benefits.

In other words, Congress believes that a hypothetical 30-year-old USPS employee's benefit costs need to be fully covered at current levels for 75 years, when the employee would then be 105. Likewise, a retiring 60-year-old USPS employee's pension benefits need to be fully covered for 75 years out -- when the retiree would then be 135 years old.

So, if USPS wants to hire, say, a new mail carrier whose benefits are worth (say) $20,000/year, they must immediately pay $1.5M into the fund (it's actually higher than that because there is a discount factor applied to account for interest and rising health care costs). Imagine if your startup or small business were held to the same requirements, and any reasonable person can see this is insanity.

Here's a WaPo article covering the problem in more detail:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/02/0...