Re: By The Dawn's Normal Light

"Gene Wirchenko" <genew_at_mail.ocis.net> wrote in message news:ojj0o0h8co50055hpql7s7171r59gbdn5v_at_4ax.com...
> "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.comREMOVE> wrote:
>
> >"Gene Wirchenko" <genew_at_mail.ocis.net> wrote in message
> >news:et70o013kluk5j5tc4g6h8pkcl62ac4pq8_at_4ax.com...
> >> "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.comREMOVE> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >> >It makese sense to me that types like video and pictures would be
black
> >> >boxes to the "collections engine" but a list of text has a structure
that
> >> >the collections engine could accomodate. --dawn
> >>
> >> Video and pictures have structure. Why could the collections
> >> engine not know it when it can know about text structure?
> >
> >Yes, it could, but when querying data I would want to retrieve
information
> >that is given in words. Asking for all films that include Brad Pitt
would
>
> An artificial distinction. Any information could be given in
> words.

But that is beside the point. I'll try to state it more clearly, since I think you will agree with what I'm thinking even if not with the way I said it.

When we are talking about query languages, we are asking questions that make sense to us in our language (mapped to the query language syntax) and expecting answers in our language -- values of attributes, for example. So, querying is, by its nature, related to language. Even if we have a need to search a DIME-encoded video file for a string, it is still language we are mapping our question and answer to.

When we have values of data in a list, we could do some string searches, just as we could with a video, looking for the string "John_Doe" in a list of e-mail addresses, for example, but if the database knows that this structure is unlike a video in that there is a list of values, then we could extend our query language to ask questions that work with the structure. So, we can ask "give me each e-mail address that includes the person's last name" and get 0 to many responses back for each person.

Did that make sense? --dawn

> [snip]
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Gene Wirchenko
>
> Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
> I have preferences.
> You have biases.
> He/She has prejudices.
Received on Thu Oct 28 2004 - 04:19:46 CEST