Re: In an RDBMS, what does "Data" mean?

"Anthony W. Youngman" <wol_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:PAu0b6GWsqpAFwSz_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk...
> In message <c0e3f26e.0405150622.553893d5_at_posting.google.com>, Tony
> <andrewst_at_onetel.net.uk> writes
> >> All this talk about how "Newton got it wrong, and Einstein got it
right"
> >> is a bunch of claptrap. The people in this forum, for the most part,
don't
> >> know what they are talking about.
> >
> >True. For the most point our expertise, if any, is in databases not
> >physics. But some people just can't help bringing their secondary
> >school-level knowledge of physics into every topic for some reason
> >(not that I'm claiming to have any more than that myself). It is very
> >tiresome.
>
> And some of us like bringing our 3rd-year undergrad Physics knowledge
> (from a top-5 Uni) into it, too :-)
>
> It's just that I find Newtonian mechanics an excellent analogy. To
> express it in computerese, both Newtonian Mechanics and Relational
> Theory are instances of the class Mathematical_Theory. BOTH are
> mathematically perfect (well, I know Newtonian Mechanics is).
>
> I just find it fascinating that, while we know that Newtonian Mechanics
> doesn't belong in the set Accurately_Matches_The_Real_World, so many
> people here (on the grounds of it's mathematical correctness) seem to
> believe that relational theory does. That argument just doesn't make
> sense to me.

While I have no knowledge related to Newtonian Mechanics, I can agree with your comparison when it comes to applying Mathematical theories. There are folks who think that Mathematics, like science, is a discipline of discovery. Others, like me, believe it to be a creative act -- our use of the logic in our brains to propose axioms and then draw logical conclusions from those. We create Mathematics, sometimes in order to address the real world (counting sheep, for example) and sometimes without such a trigger in nature. Mathematical errors can be found by proving new theorems or showing where previous proofs were incorrect. There is no need to talk about anything in the real world in order to talk about such Mathematics. Folks on this list who want to discuss "relational theory" as strictly a Mathematical theory are correct in suggesting that my questions, pretty much all of them, are outside of the scope of such a theory and would, therefore, we unwelcoming of such in this forum.

If we have such a mathematical theory we can "apply it". That act is a scientific one and one that can easily be done poorly. The application of Mathematics is like the application of a metaphor (I know, I know, I've said that many times before) where the Mathematics will fit some aspects of our target domain and possibly not fit others. While it might lay down perfectly on top of its target application, it is likely there will be many areas physically related to the domain for which the Mathematical theory is irrelevant. For example, with the counting of sheep, we can apply the set of Integers with some basic arithimetic functions and we can get the counting right. But that will not tell us what to do if one sheep is missing. Such a question would be orthogonal to the "Counting Theory" that so many shepards are into. A shepherd who is immersed only in such a theory could lose their entire flock while sticking to the truth of their theory, convinced that if they only study it more and learn more about it, they will solve this problem too. That is why "sheep herding theory" is not the same as "counting theory".

My interest is in helping Little Bo Peep as well as the owner of those sheep. I'm curious about why when she took a course in college about shepherding, most of the time was spent talking about counting them, which didn't actually help her much when she got to the "real world". That is why I do not feel guilty about bringing up issues about databases in a database theory newsgroup. If this were a "relational theory" newsgroup where the goal were to push the edges of a Mathematical theory without interest in whether this theory were useful to databases or in what way it might be useful or not, that would be a different discussion.

Cheers! --dawn Received on Sun May 16 2004 - 14:02:59 CEST