Re: The Practical Benefits of the Relational Model

"D Guntermann" <guntermann_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:H4rF49.A9I_at_news.boeing.com...
>> If you want to propose another formal system that does a better
>> job of 'communicating the verbs of a predicate statement to a
>> system', then go for it.
>
> I wish I was that smart. However, I believe that table/relvar names are not
> as arbitrary as has been categorized. They might not communicate the full
> semantic meaning of a predicate to a system, but they certainly can be used,
> in my view, as a mechanism or placeholder that communicates predicate
> differentation to a system, even when attribute name and types are the same
> across base relation variables.

I have been prompted to wonder if relvar names might not best be seen as attribute name prefixs (or postfixs etc) for certain *marked* attributes in a relvar. A key problem with relvar names is that they don't really have any place in predicate sentances. This is particually interesting in the context of relvar projection.

>> I'm happy to work with (and *within*) the relational model pretty much as
>> it stands today (give or take a few tweaks here and there :-)
>
> So am I. Thanks for taking the time to address my points.
>
> The words, lament and bleat being attributed to me. Ouch. I wish I could
> have conveyed my meaning in a better manner.

Bleat was a little harsh, sorry about that. Conveying meaning is something that we could all get better at. One thing I'm hoping to gain from these discussions is to improve my ability here.

Cheers
Paul Vernon
Business Intelligence, IBM Global Services Received on Sun Nov 03 2002 - 18:28:53 CET