Re: Demo: Modelling Cost of Travel Paths Between Towns

From: Nick Landsberg <SPAMhukolauTRAP_at_SPAMworldnetTRAP.att.net>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 04:20:03 GMT
Message-ID: <TPRrd.1020351$Gx4.895721@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>

Neo wrote:

>>>... the thread title "Database planning - Hierarchical Problem"...
>>>Also, I would like to see a complete/fullDeveloped DBMS's
>>>equivalent of [XDb2's] sample queries.
>>
>>Why? It's just standard SQL. There's nothing tricky about it.

>
>
> Then how difficult could it be for you to post the standard SQL that
> performs the equivalent of XDb2's queries (allowing each person to
> have various properties, classifications, etc). Example query shown
> below:
>
> // Find person who is a doctor and engineer,
> // whose boss is someone whose employee is republican.
> // Finds donna.
> SELECT %.cls=person & %.profession=doctor & %.profession=engineer &
> %.boss=(%.employee=(%.party=republican));
>
> Then we can further compare if the initial queries continue to work as
> new things are represented.

I find it difficult to conceive of a real-world application which would require that kind of a query.

Please remember, most (if not all) of the practitioners are being paid real, hard currency to solve, real-world problems. The above sounds like a WIBNI (Wouldn't it be nice if") I could execute that kind of query in finite time. Neo, you'd gain a whole lot more credibiliy if you could come up with queries that are required in the business world than ones you dream up out of whole cloth.

Example1: "Show me how the sales of cold medicines have varied between retail stores over the last 3 months in the Northeast Region for Walmart."

Example2: "Show me how the sales of headache remedies have varied between retail stores over the last 3 months in the Southwest Region for Walmart."

What does the DDL look like? e.g. "aspirin is a thing", "tylenol is a thing", "Nyquil is a thing" etc. some are "cold medecines", which
are a sub-class of medicines, but some could be used as simply a "headache remedy." Thus they belong to two hierarchies.

(I thought we went through this discussion something like 30 years ago during the IMS vs. CODASYL wars. To mis-quote Patton, I hate to go over the same ground more than once.)

How do we input daily sales of these things into this database? Is December1Tylenol a different "thing" then December2Tylenol ?

Note: Any sample with less than a Terabyte of data is bogus.

NPL

-- 
"It is impossible to make anything foolproof
because fools are so ingenious"
  - A. Bloch

Received on Thu Dec 02 2004 - 22:20:03 CST