Re: deductive databases

"mAsterdam" <mAsterdam_at_vrijdag.org> wrote:  in message news:42870df1$0$64598$e4fe514c_at_news.xs4all.nl...
> mountain man wrote:

>> IMO there are at least 2 roads
>> to database systems theory:
>> the road of theory and
>> the road of practice.
>
> The users of roman numbers could do
> very well without 0 - at least that's
> what their generations thought.
> I suspect that in the early days of the change
> to arab numbers they looked on 0 as being of value,
> albeit theoretical.

As an aside, AFAIK the arab numbers are Indian.

Brahmagupta's (b.598 A.D) treatise Brahma-sputa-siddhanta was translated into Arabic under the title Sind Hind.

For several centuries this translation mained a standard text of reference in the Arab world. It was from this translation of an Indian text on Mathematics that the Arab mathematicians perfected the decimal system and gave the world its current system of enumeration which we call the Arab numerals, which are originally Indian numerals.

Sorry about the tangentiation,

Pete Brown
Falls Creek
Oz
www.mountainman.com.au Received on Tue May 17 2005 - 13:12:33 CEST