Re: c.d.theory glossary 0.0.4 (repost)

I'd like to have the following 3 items discussed for possible inclusion in the glossary.

ACID: An acronym for "Atomic", "Consistent", "Isolated" and "Durable".

A well formed transaction against a database is said to have all four of these properties.

OPEN UNIVERSE: One possible view of the relationship between the data in a database and the subject matter thus described (See CLOSED UNIVERSE).

In the OPEN UNIVERSE, there are certain facts which are true in the real world, and could be asserted in the database, but are not. Thus a search for a fact in a database that comes up empty does not assert that the fact is false in the real world.

CLOSED UNIVERSE: One possible view of the relationship between the data in a database and the subject matter thus described (See OPEN UNIVERSE).

In the CLOSED UNIVERSE, a database that is capable of storing a certain fact about the real world, but has no such fact stored, is implicitly denying the truth of that fact. Received on Thu Sep 30 2004 - 09:35:54 CDT