Re: Teach SELECT DISTINCT first!

OK, consider the following:

How do you represent a set inside of a computer?

One way is to use a bitmap. Take the power set of the inital set, assign each element of the
power set a binary number, and do it in such a way that the individual bits correspond to the individual
elements of the original set.

Now you can represent any subset of the original set as a binary number. Yes, but you've sorted
the original set, as well. If you ask the question

{pepperoni, onion} ?= {onion, pepperoni}

and you use a bitmap representation to answer the question, you are going to end up sorting.

Is this clear? Received on Thu Apr 29 2004 - 08:02:17 CDT