Re: Stored fields ordered left to right

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message <news:LaJHb.687449$Fm2.593735_at_attbi_s04>...

> "Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote in message news:ON6dnTDvsbMQAHOiRVn-hg_at_golden.net...
> >
> > Mathematical relations do not rely on attribute order. The physical
> > representation of mathematical relations using written symbols on planar
> > surfaces conventionally uses attribute order for succinctness.
>
> This doesn't seem correct to me.
>
> Consider the union of two sets of ordered pairs:
>
> { (1,2) }
> union
> { (2,1) }
>
> The union of those sets is a set with two elements, yes? How
> are we distinguishing between (1,2) and (2,1) if not by order?
> Is there some hidden information?

What if we assume these n-tuples aren't really ordered, but instead, the attribute names just so happen to be successive ordinal numbers, which we just so happen to omit for brevity in Usenet postings? >=)

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jlfoster%40znet.com>  DC8s in Spaace: <http://www.xenu.net/>
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