Re: foundations of relational theory?

"Tony Gravagno" <g6q3x9lu53001_at_sneakemail.com.invalid> wrote in message news:7phbpv8g1h7m9g4csckol25ukoebjftvsv_at_4ax.com...
> In my mind the answer to your questions is that a developer shouldn't
> need to plan for every possible question that could be asked of
> his/her database.

Agreed.

> If we create an application where it's function is
> (now or perhaps in the future) to identify a parent based on the name
> of one of her children, then the database should be constructed to
> account for that eventuality.

That doesn't sound so good to me. Having the schema be dependent on what applications we anticipate is a problem. Normalization makes it possible to have the schema be dependent solely on the relations among the data, and therefor be the correct schema for all possible applications. This gets you want you wanted in your first sentence: the developer doesn't need to plan for every possible query. He already knows he's done the right thing.

> In reality any good application
> developer can predict the nature of most of the queries that will be
> asked of the database within a specific business context.

I'm sceptical of this claim.

> That
> drasically limits the permutations, and allows the developer to create
> only those structures necessary to support the application. When we
> have needs to extend out of the box it's no problem to reformat data
> into new tables, or simply create extended definitions that point to
> existing data.

Wouldn't you agree that it would be better to have a system whereby no changes to existing applications are necessary to accomodate new applications?

Marshall Received on Sat Oct 25 2003 - 07:10:57 CEST