Re: database design method

I see many advantages of value-based object identifiers, perhaps in such areas as identification (obvious), intrinsic ordering/mapping, as well as copies (deep versus shallow) of values and redundancy detection mechanisms. However, how would this be useful in a truly platform-independent, distributed datastore system? Is there a global mechanism for both generation and reconcilation of object identifiers - even if they avoid pointers and are based on value?

Thanks,

Dan

"Jan Hidders" <hidders_at_REMOVE.THIS.uia.ua.ac.be> wrote in message news:3dd59681$1_at_news.uia.ac.be...
> Lauri Pietarinen wrote:
> >Jan Hidders wrote:
> >

[snip]
>
> Yes, but the object identifier as pointer is not the type of object
> identifer I (and the article I mentioned) was talking about. What I meant
> could also be called "abstract value" and is in some sense the theoretical
> clean version of surrogate identifiers. The big difference with surrogate
> identifiers is that the user can never get to see their value and the only
> operation that is defined for them is equality. Such a restricted type may
> seem a bit strange and not very useful at first sight but it makes the
life
> of the DBMS easier (for example the DBMS can reuse identifiers that are no
> longer used) and allows the user to define views and queries in which new
> identifiers are generated without using some clever arithmetic to generate
> new surrogate identifiers. In fact, if such object identifiers are
possible
> (including special operators to generate them) IMO the good old flat
> relational model would be all we need.
>
Received on Sun Nov 17 2002 - 16:39:17 CST