Re: citations of nature
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 13:22:42 -0600
Message-ID: <slrnbve5k2.ta3.adrian_at_sixfingeredman.net>
mountain man <hobbit_at_southern_seaweed.com.op> schrieb:
> Do primitive databases exist in nature in some form? If so, in what
> form(s)?
Unless you're talking about the relational model in particular, I think that whether something is a database or not is purely subjective -- are you considering the "stateful" part of the system independently of the rest or not? And even if you are, it's an "implementation detail" inside the system -- the state by itself is useless, and anybody outside the entire system can't tell where you've drawn the line.
In nature it's not very enlightening to make the distinction because the state and the mutator are the same thing. Obvious examples like DNA and brains are more like self-modifying processes than databases. Received on Sat Jan 03 2004 - 20:22:42 CET