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

"Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message news:c184p6$bs5$1_at_news.netins.net...
> "Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message
> news:kcMZb.30719$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

Aw, shucks. Thanks. I enjoy the discussions.

• erk