Re: object algebra

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:%uz%b.414746$xy6.2350159_at_attbi_s02...
> "Neo" <neo55592_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4b45d3ad.0402261256.783f8bd2_at_posting.google.com...
> >
> > So are you in favor of NULLs (or its patches) and the resulting weaker
> > realtionships?
>
> I am against nulls. I'm not sure, but I think perhaps the only
relationship
> I recognize is set membership. I do not currently see the need for
different
> kinds of relationships.
>
>
> Marshall

There is something easy about this approach and I'll admit I haven't caught up with all postings in this thread, but I toss this out. It seems to me that if we have three propositions:

John is a 30 year old Calvinist who has pledged $30,000 Sara is a 20 year old Methodist who has pledged $10,000 Dora is 40 years old and has pledged $20,000

then it makes sense to be able to store and retrieve these. Having a value (yes, a value) for an element that effectively means "this proposition does not include information of this type" makes sense. I agree there should not be a NULL that is the absense of a value. A two-valued logic yields fewer s/w bugs, for one thing.

--dawn Received on Fri Feb 27 2004 - 16:44:29 CET