Re: c.d.theory glossary - RELATION

Laconic2 wrote:

> ...The "R" in ER modeling stands for "Relationship" and
> the distinction between "Relationshp" and "Relation"
> becomes important.

Noooooo! Please don't. Oops. Too late.

[language mapping]

An _entity_ in ER modelling usally gets mapped to a _table_ in a SQL db - that would be^H^Hrepresent a _relation_ in relational, no? A _relation_(ship) mostly maps to a foreing key in the child table referring the parent. The use of 'association' instead of 'relation' in ER (or would it be EA, ERA being Entity-Relationship-Attribute, hmmm... not good) never really cought on.

While I am at it, in the many MV and RM thead I see MV.File mapped to SQL.table or RM.relation but from what I read one could also map it to SQL.schema' (or database?), or is this completely wrong?

Anyway, Im not blaming this language mess for the lack of progress in talking about database, but I sure would appreciate *some* cleaning up.

Any group of people intensively discussing a topic makes up new meanings for existing words and even new words as they go along. Now when these groups join in a symposium once in a while, sometimes the roughest edges do get dicussed and cleared.

This work appearently has not been done yet. Which symposia should be held? Who would benefit? Received on Thu Apr 29 2004 - 22:44:02 CEST