Re: domain questionnaire

In article <97bek2$sn2$1_at_news.tue.nl>, Jan Hidders says...

>As I said elsewhere, when you are making a data
>model you are making a model of what the people you are modeling for
>think that their reality is like. So if they don't know then you cannot
>model it, by definition. That's why ordinary data modelling is usually
>simpeler than modelling in the work-of-god arena; it's harder to ask
>God if your model is right. :-)

Can I ask priests instead?

Seriously, I see your point: I don't necessarily have to expect that relational model must be successfull in science topics simply because of the fact that it is successfull in business world. The situation looks somewhat parallel to OOP, where any attempt of deducing inheritance via LSP principle fails for rectangle and square, for example. Somebody even summarized it like "OOP dosn't work for Geometry". Still, since science has much more rigorous vocabulary, many people are tempted to test their ideas in this area first...

>> BTW, if you look into archives, you might notice that I was exactly
>> at this position a year ago. The fact of not making any progress
>> really bothers me.
>
>What is it exactly that you do not understand?

This is more like relational metaphysics. Let's write a person as a vector:

<person|

Same for the weight domain:

|weight>

Then, some "inner" product looks like:

<Joe|weightInKg> = 60

If we want to translate weight, then

|weightInKg> = 0.4 |weightInLbs>

Here, while weight metrics clearly belong to some a linear vector space, can't I make person superpositions as well? (Schrödinger cat societies:-)

This QM parallel, however, looks less naive if we notice that a fact like

<JoesCar|plateNumber>

is a QM measurement, where measuring device is, say, a police officer.

>The weight is what the user thinks the weight is. If you are saying
>"yes, but I want to model what 'weight' really is" then you are missing
>the point.

Yes, but in simple cases all users seems to agree what integer, string and other primary datatypes are. It's unfortunate that complex domains are not universal in the same sence. Received on Mon Feb 26 2001 - 08:14:50 CET