Re: Nearest Common Ancestor Report (XDb1's $1000 Challenge)

From: Neo <neo55592_at_hotmail.com>
Date: 1 Jun 2004 09:45:55 -0700
Message-ID: <4b45d3ad.0406010845.7d34c52_at_posting.google.com>


> > XDb1 can accept two things whose attributes do not allow them to be
> > distinguished (ie two persons named john). Why? Because such
> > situations can come up in the real world.
>
> Yes. And in the real world, extra attributes get added right away to
> create a way to distinguish them. My wife started at a new job in March.
> She is called José. One of the women she supervises is also called José.
> Everybody at my wife's office now calls my wife "José D"
> and the other lady "José T".

True, but define the time period "right away". In the example given above, "right away" could be from a few hours to a week and in other cases it could be infinite. During that time an RM implementation may not accept the second person due to constraints (which can also be added to XDb1 by user code), while XDb1 could. During that time, XDb1 could make decisions based two persons with same name, where as RM's would be based on only one person. Both methods have pluses and minuses. XDb1's approach maybe more applicable for AI-type situations.

> Why? Because in the real world, there's a NEED to distinguish things from
> one another, and if they happen to have the same name something else is
> used to make that possible.

True, sometimes in order to meet a need, an attribute, constraints and code have to be added. But having a NEED doesn't guarantee it is always satisfied. Received on Tue Jun 01 2004 - 18:45:55 CEST

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