Re: Codd provided appropriate mathematics ... (was Re: Relational and MV (response to "foundations of relational theory"))

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:kcMZb.30719$Xp.117694_at_attbi_s54...
> "Eric Kaun" <ekaun_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Wb6Zb.39912$sd3.33831_at_newssvr33.news.prodigy.com...
> >
> > Here's the real rub: relations allow you to reason soundly, and in
> > arbitrarily complex ways, in terms of atomic propositions (which means
it
> > takes more work to develop them, due to the fact that you have to think
> > about what those propositions are!) That means your application can grow
> > "linearly" with respect to functionality and query complexity - hard
> > questions are hard, easy questions are easy. With a hierarchy, a single
> > brand of complex question is easy, and other things are murder; plus you
> > have to write those other things in baroque hierarchy-scanning
procedural
> > code.
>
> This is an excellent and eloquent statement about the problem with trees.
>
> Based on this and some previous posts, I hereby vote Eric Kaun as the
> best newcomer to comp.databases.theory. He's polite, too! We could
> use some more of that around here, ahem.
>

Good point, Marshall -- I have some disagreement with Eric's statement, but respect it as a concise statement related to putting data into 1NF; and I definitely appreciate Eric tackling the questions and issues rather than, well you know. cheers! --dawn Received on Sat Feb 21 2004 - 18:33:21 CET