Re: Help! I can't support normalization

"Paul" <pbrazier_at_cosmos-uk.co.uk> wrote in message news:51d64140.0211070129.6fab7168_at_posting.google.com...
> 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.

Don't confuse possible representations (read D&D) from the actual values themselves.

> 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.

But theory is real! More real than our reality infact :-)

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

No.

Regards
Paul Vernon
Business Intelligence, IBM Global Services Received on Thu Nov 07 2002 - 17:12:01 CET