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

From: mAsterdam <mAsterdam_at_vrijdag.org>
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 00:54:14 +0200
Message-ID: <40bfac0d$0$15440$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>

Bill H wrote:

> mAsterdam wrote:

>>Dawn M. Wolthuis wrote:
>>
>>>It think it is worth noting that is far more difficult to retrieve an
>>>invoice the way it looked originally after chopping it up
>>
>>You chopped it up. Why?
>>
>>While chopping it up, you got rid of the layout.
>>What you will retrieve is the data, not the layout.
>>Now if you also have some markup for the abstract invoice,
>>you can just fit the invoice-data you retrieved into the
>>invoice-markup.

> 
> I find it interesting you should say this.  All RDBMS products I've seen
> show data in columns and rows.  In fact, that is the language of RDBMS: rows
> and columns.
> 
> It is not unusual, therefore, to define and describe data in a preferred
> layout?

I don't know about the 'therefore', but in my experience their preferred layout is something which domain experts are most comfortable with.

The most important question here, though (the one Dawn refused to answer) is why do want to chop it up? What exactly are you trying to achieve by doing so? Received on Thu Jun 03 2004 - 17:54:14 CDT