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

"mAsterdam" <mAsterdam_at_vrijdag.org> wrote in message news:40bfb3c2$0$15440$e4fe514c_at_news.xs4all.nl...
> Dawn M. Wolthuis wrote:
>
> > mAsterdam wrote:
> >>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?
> [chop]
> > Sorry, not refusal, but even I get sick of my broken record on 1NF --
> > that's why things are chopped up unnecessarily, in order to put them
into
> > 1NF. So, in the example I gave, there is no reason, in my opinion, not
to
> > have a single line of the invoice be stored in a tuple, allowing the
lists
> > to be elements of the tuple, just as the single-valued attributes are.
>
> So you don't need the to share the internal structure.
> Don't do that, then.

My understanding of relational structure is that it is for the logical view of the database, not the internal structure. If we opt for something else as the logical level, then we are not doing relational theory, we are doing something else (such as Nelson-Pick [un]theory). There are folks, particular those working with XML who have worked on non-relational theories of databases and I'm reading what I can of what Jan Hidders suggested earlier. But, again, if your data model (logical level) is not relational, then what's the purpose of relational theory? --dawn Received on Fri Jun 04 2004 - 02:05:12 CEST