Re: Dreaming About Redesigning SQL
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 15:44:27 GMT
Message-ID: <vTwmb.26460$HS4.96761_at_attbi_s01>
"Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote in message news:DMSdnQAx4NQUGweiU-KYhA_at_golden.net...
> >
> > > In general, though, a table with no parent and no child is of little
> > > use. It must contain information that has no relevance to any other
> > > information in the database. Can you give an example or two of such
> > > a table?
>
> Dee, Dum, Integer. Is three enough or is it too many?
Two of those relation names are so obscure that he's never going to be able to figure out what you mean. I did a Google search for "Dee" and the first hit was about Dee Schneider, ha ha! "table dee" fared no better.
"Dee" is the relation of zero attributes and one row. "Dum" is the relation of zero attributes and zero rows. (I don't think they're very good names, either, but at least they have a rare tad of whimsy in them.)
These relations are useful and interesting in much the same way 1 and 0 are useful integers:
relation X join Dee = Dee
relation X JOIN Dum = Dum
Cool, eh?
I'm just going to assume everyone is familiar with the unary relation The Integers.
Marshall Received on Sat Oct 25 2003 - 17:44:27 CEST