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

> So, are you saying that if Christopher Browne's name was misspelled
> in the original input as "Brown", and then corrected somehow,
> Alice Brown's name would become Alice Browne (note spelling)
> in any reports generated?

If thing/name/brown was updated to "browne" then all things having a reference to "brown" as part of their name would now be referenceing "browne" thus the "brown" in "christopher brown" and "alice brown" would in effect become "browne".

> What is the mechanism for correcting such (normally encountered)
> situations?

Instead of updating the thing/name/brown, update thing/person/christopher brown. During this process, thing/name/browne would be created and linked as part of his name. This would not affect "alice brown".

> To take this to the point of silliness, why doesn't the string
> "brown" refer to the characters 'b', 'r', 'o', 'w', 'n' as 5
> different references which could each be stored in the data-store
> just once.

In XDb1, the string or name "brown" DOES NOT store "brown" but in fact refers to the symbols 'b', 'r', 'o', 'w', 'n' as 5 different references. Each atomic symbol is automatically entered in the db when it is first created. In XDb1, things (ie data) are normalized down to atomics symbols. For more info, see www.xdb1.com/Basic/Name.asp Received on Mon Jun 21 2004 - 17:51:24 CEST