Re: In an RDBMS, what does "Data" mean?
Date: 16 May 2004 06:30:08 -0700
Message-ID: <c0e3f26e.0405160530.257134c8_at_posting.google.com>
"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 :-)
I am suitably impressed and humbled... ;-)
> 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.
You keep saying that (on and on, tediously...) but it just doesn't work, does it? After all, didn't NASA put a man on the moon using Newtonian Mechanics? Expensive and complex successful experiments have been done to observe the effects of relativity, but it hardly impacts on the real world as lived in by us humans does it? If your analogy holds any water at all (to give you the benefit of very large doubt), it suggests that relational theory will do just fine for pretty much anything we ever want to do "in the real world". Received on Sun May 16 2004 - 15:30:08 CEST