Re: Redundancy and NULLS in Xdb

"Laconic2" <laconic2_at_comcast.net> wrote in message news:fdidnSmXa6P0OxPcRVn-2A_at_comcast.com...
> For almost a year now, Neo has been "treating" us to presentations on
how
> his "experimental database" represents complex data without using any
> redundancy or NULLs at the atomic level.
>
> Of course, he's wrong. The data items like "brown" that he claims are
> "atomic" really aren't atomic at all. Not only can they be broken down
> into characters, but the individual characters can be further decomposed.
>
> The only form of digital data that can't be further decomposed are the raw
> binary digits: zero and one.
>
> What Neo has shown us is syntactic sugar. Once we strip all that sugar
> away, and get down to the real nitty gritty, we'll see that an Xdb
> database is really a bunch of ones and zeroes.
>
> Right away, Neo is in trouble. The ones are all redundant, except for the
> first! They all look identical! A truly non redundant system would have
> only one "one" in it. All the others would be replaced by pointers back
to
> the original one. The same treatment would have to be given to the
zeroes:
> a truly redundant system would have one one "zero" in it. All the others
> would be replaced by a pointer back to the original zero.
>
> But it doesn't stop there! Not only are the zeroes redundant, but they
> also have NO VALUE! The PHB once pointed this out to Dilbert! What they
> really are, are placeholders indicating where a one might have been
written,
> but was not. Functionally, they are NULLS.
>
> So Neo's Xdb. at the truly atomic level, is full of redundancy and NULLS.
> Hence he hasn't even won his own contest!
>
>
> In case you are by any chance wondering.... the above is SATIRE!!!!
Don't
> take ANY of this SERIOUSLY, OK?

ROTFLMAO Received on Mon Nov 08 2004 - 01:54:39 CET