It's pizza-time again (was: c.d.theory glossary - RELATION)

x wrote:
> mAsterdam wrote:

>>These sure do not have the sense of 'aboutness' ...
>>Equating 'fact' and 'thing' gives me an uneasy feeling.

Several times I have used and explained ER-modelling in order to grow preliminary database designs, with mixed teams of IT- and subject-matter (non-IT) professionals.
I called it 'entity-modelling' in order to avoid clashes with existing notions about relations.

The graphical part of the model would have boxes representing entities and lines between those boxes.
I used the term associations for the lines between the boxes. iow: I used association as a synonym for ER.RELATIONSHIP to avoid (near) homonymity with RM.RELATION.

This was just an introduction to expand on my uneasy feeling towards equating 'thing' and 'fact'.

In that context I also used a distinction:

_thing_ :
pizza, topping, table, clock, customer, onion, order, order-item. (now I am not so sure about the last two).

_fact_ :
"It's 4 p.m", "We are out of onions",
"the customer at table 12 ordered 2 neapolitan icecreams".

Am I the only one to use this distinction? Should I avoid it because it is flawed?
Do we need it discussing database?

Please help, I'm stuck! Received on Sat May 01 2004 - 05:36:30 CDT