Re: Values have types ??

On Sat, 06 Sep 2003 06:15:47 -0700, Costin Cozianu wrote:

> Go back to your mathematical books and show me a single instance where 2
> has an associated type specified for it. I bet you won't find it.

        Thing is, when you are talking Math you are usually assuming base 10.

        But for the database, 2 is a symbol. You sure can have a typeless system that deals with 'just strings', but that could hardly be called a relational database, and would forego all the benefits of type checking.

        For example, in your line of reasoning the database wouldn't know if that 2 is a number or a string. That is not so bad, as automatic type casting in this case would be pretty much straightforward. But what about 1011? You surely want to know if that's decimal, octal, hexadecimal or binary, don't you?

>>>In the above case I'd propose that the MST is, well, {2}.
>> 
>> 	That meaning?  You see, the type is part of the meaning...
>> 

        Thank you. So what?

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