Re: Nested Relations / RVAs / NFNF

From: Marshall Spight <mspight_at_dnai.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 15:02:44 GMT
Message-ID: <oS7gd.539426$8_6.146099_at_attbi_s04>


"erk" <eric.kaun_at_pnc.com> wrote in message news:1098903619.440578.215730_at_f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

>

> Ah, I did misunderstand your point, sorry. Agreed that integer
> shouldn't be used unless you plan on doing integer operations, and
> similarly with string operations.

Right. Which sometimes you might, and sometimes, as with a surrogate key, you might not.

> 1) Creation requires a parameter, unless you have a single value or a
> generator. Otherwise, such as with an Oracle sequence, you've got a
> service doling out the "next" value. Are you talking specifically about
> generating a new, unique value?

Yeah. It's sort of like, imagine a possrep with zero components. It like an infinite enumerated type. (Which is actually how I think of int these days, only int requires at least one further operations, successor().)

[...]

> 3) Why copy?

I guess I really just mean "assignment." Which is even more likely to be entirely system-defined.

[...]

> A twisty question this raises is: for what subset of things we
> typically regard as String are string operators actually ever used? And
> then in a language like Java, how would you cope with this
> almost-a-string-ness?

It seems like the right way to do it is, as someone said here recently, have only the required minimum set of operators be part of the definition, and have everything else external. Then if you want to use the OO style ( s.func() instead of func(s) ) you can define a view on the class that includes those functions you want, just for that module.

Marshall Received on Thu Oct 28 2004 - 17:02:44 CEST

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