Re: Database-valued attributes?

From: Costin Cozianu <c_cozianu_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 12:01:36 -0800
Message-ID: <borf8t$1hkn0f$1@ID-152540.news.uni-berlin.de>

> Never a bad mode to be in. Perhaps you could ponder on this one. If a
> database contains relation *variables* does that mean that a Database Valued
> Atrribute also contains variables?
>

There's hardly a sharp distinction to be made. Variables live in a context, and that context is a mapping from names to values. As such it can be regarded as a value. It's a very common trick in languages like Scheme and Lisp.

So while you can update a row to chage quantity from 1 to 2, you can update the same row, to change some other column to

{ ("varname" : newvalue) }

best,
Costin Received on Tue Nov 11 2003 - 14:01:36 CST