Re: Help! I can't support normalization

"neil" <neil_at_efc.be> wrote in message news:<hO7y9.7008$Nd.2965_at_afrodite.telenet-ops.be>...
> > How about mantissa and logarithm of a decimal number? For example, why
> >
> > 1.33e-12
> >
> > couldn't be considered as a concatenation of the "first name" 1.33 and
> > the "last name" -12. Wouldn't it be better store a number in 2
> > columns?
>
> You always need to know what the data means.
>
> If it is a currency exchange rate then it should be in one column.
>
> If it is major and minor releases of a software product then they should be
> in two columns.
> (Note to myself: go back and change my versions table to use two columns:-)

OK then, what about complex numbers?

Logically they are one "thing" so should you store them as "3+4i" in one column?
Or as real part and imaginary part in two columns? Or even in two columns r, theta where z = r * e ^ theta? It's only for our convenience that we split them into two parts, the complex numbers with integer (real, imaginary) parts are countable so we could easily map them one to one with the integers.

I guess the answer is it depends what you want to do with it. It seems very frustrating trying to think theoretically about DBMSs that so much comes down to the real-world interpretation of the data which is kind of external to the database itself.

Is this because DBMSs are constrained to use first-order logic instead of higher-order logic?

Paul. Received on Thu Nov 07 2002 - 10:29:58 CET