Kenneth Downs wrote:
> You want active automation anywhere were some derivation is taking
place.
> If you store extended price in your detai lines, a constraint saying
it
> must be price * qty is silly. The constraint should be that the user
may
> not directly write that column, and Automaticus fills it in for you.
>
> The thesis I am developing is that there are not that many places
where you
> should use a passive constraint, it may be possible to limit advanced
> complex systems solely to Unique and RI. The real service and power
of the
> system will be in the automatically generated information. If I am
wrong,
> I hope I've the gumption to report here why it did not work. If I'm
right,
> I'll be releasing something under GPL someday. Wish me luck :)
I do. What are are saying seems uncontroversial: that which the system
can derive, it should derive; that which it cannot, the user must
supply correctly. But there is a lot more than RI and uniqueness that
cannot be derived: rules like "person must be aged 18 or over on start
date", "person cannot be assigned to 2 or more departments at the same
time", etc. etc. It isn't clear to me what new insight you have here
that will lead to systems that can automatically pevent such rule
violations by actively supplying the correct values.
Received on Tue Oct 19 2004 - 07:57:10 CDT
