Re: Does Codd's view of a relational database differ from that ofDate&Darwin?[M.Gittens]

Jan Hidders wrote:
> Marshall Spight wrote:
> >
> > I'm still wildly unclear as to what this all means, but
> > I got a hint from the above line.
> >
> > Is the word "abstract" here being used in the same sense that
> > is in Java? Meaning roughly: uninstantiable with parts of the
> > definition to be filled in at a later time?
>
> No, not really. It has to do with the distinction between on the one
> hand houses, people and countries and on the other hand strings, numbers
> and booleans. The latter three can be denoted directly, the first three
> only indirectly by denoting a certain combination of values associated
> with them.

Hmmm. I guess I don't see the point. There are some things that computers can operate on, and there are some things they can't. Real world objects are outside the realm of the computer; it can only operate on its model of these things.

Is that the point of the distinction, or is there something else?

Marshall Received on Sat Jul 02 2005 - 15:20:15 CDT