Re: cdt glossary - TABLE

From: Jan Hidders <jan.hidders_at_REMOVETHIS.pandora.be>
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 09:50:32 GMT
Message-ID: <Ib6Ae.141486$3L6.7400492@phobos.telenet-ops.be>

mAsterdam wrote:

> 
> The current (0.0.4) glossary entry,
> 

>> [Table/Row/Column] (SQL-DBMS)
>> Table: A collection of columns (the table header) and rows (the body).
>> Row: A collection of values, conforming to the table header columns.
>>
>> One table may contain data about one entity,
>> about several entities, about one or several
>> relationships or any combination.
>> A column can be seen as the attribute of the
>> entity/one of the entities/relationships
>> about which the table is concerned.

>  
> , says nothing about the rows being ordered or not.
> Should it?

Yeah, I think we could be a bit more explicit here. It would say something like:

A *table* consists of a table header and a body. The *table header* consists of a list of column names that contains each column name at most once and associates with each column name in that list a certain type. The *body* is a bag of rows where a *row* is a list of values that conforms to the table header.

You might use the notion of "ordered set" to simplify the definition of "table header" but that might make it less clear to some people.

• Jan Hidders

Received on Sun Jul 10 2005 - 04:50:32 CDT