Re: Noninferential vs. inferential DBMS
Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 15:15:45 +0100
Message-ID: <ew4pc.4191$NK4.363507_at_stones.force9.net>
x wrote:
>>For example, suppose you have an employee table, you could get out of it
>>that "Fred Smith has empid=123, works in dept 10 and has a salary of
>>10,000". But you wouldn't be able to ask "Is there an employee called
>>Fred Smith?
> > Inferential DBMS means there are some inferences carried out by the DBMS. > So a non-inferential DBMS won't carry out any inferences.
So if my database stores the proposition: "Fred Smith has empid=123, works in dept 10 and has a salary of 10,000"
I can infer the proposition:
"Fred Smith has empid=123 and works in dept 10"
I suppose this inference is really done by the DBA in some sense, because for all the DBMS knows, the query could mean: "Fred Smith is age 123 and has shoes that are size 10"
Is this the kind of inference you mean?
Inferring the real-world *meaning* of the data?
Or is projecting the tuple
('Fred Smith', 123, 10, 10,000)
onto
('Fred Smith', 123, 10)
and example of inference?
It would useful to have some examples of what you mean.
Paul. Received on Fri May 14 2004 - 16:15:45 CEST