Re: Database-valued attributes?

Paul Vernon wrote:

> "Costin Cozianu" <c_cozianu_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:borf8t$1hkn0f$1_at_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

>>>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.

First of all, variables are just a matter of convenience. There is no intrinsic need for variables.

Any algorithm that has variables (thus uses side effects) can be rewritten as an algorithm that doesn't use variables (side effect free, or purely functional). And no significant effort is required for that, often time is just a change of paradigm and often time the quality of code improves..

But even in a classical programming language setting where you have variables, you can set asside the variables and as variables and look at them as entries in a context, the context being always an implicit parameter in the call chain (or call stack if there is a stack). The context can then be accessed like any other map value.

I'm also curious, do you have a definition for variable ?

> Regards
> Paul Vernon
> Business Intelligence, IBM Global Services
>

Best,
Costin Received on Tue Nov 11 2003 - 22:18:13 CET