Re: DB clasical structure violation

In article <Oj8W8.1887$Xx3.206796058_at_newssvr14.news.prodigy.com>, Jerason Banes <jbanes_at_techie.com> writes
>> And I would agree with you only too strongly about people deciding "oh
>> we'll put the user's social security number in the name field". *BUT*
>> how would *you* stop this in SQL? You've just declared "name" to be a
>> text field. How do you stop the user putting any old crap in there? otoh
>> you *can* stop users putting text into numeric fields like price, for
>> example. Been there, done that, sworn blue murder at the silly idiot
>> who's caused 10 times more problems than he's solved.
>
>Isn't this what God created CHECK constraints for? On a good enterprise
>database, you should be able to combine a constraint and stored procedure to
>check just about anything.
>
Well, you can do the same thing in Pick, too (I presume CHECK is a SQL thing?)

But if you declare a free text field for surname, how do you know that what they put in is a *name* and not a *description*. Okay, you can ban numerics from the name field, but a computer can only ever enforce syntax. It doesn't have a clue about semantics.

Cheers,
Wol

-- 
Anthony W. Youngman - wol at thewolery dot demon dot co dot uk
Witches are curious by definition and inquisitive by nature. She moved in. "Let 
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Maskerade : (c) 1995 Terry Pratchett