Re: Conceptual, Logical, and Physical views of data

From: David Cressey <david.cressey_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2005 11:36:48 GMT
Message-ID: <knVTe.9242$FW1.4118@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net>

"Jon Heggland" <heggland_at_idi.ntnu.no> wrote in message news:MPG.1d8a065563cedb73989700_at_news.ntnu.no...
> In article <1126126111.444396.247600_at_g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> dawnwolthuis_at_gmail.com says...
> > I do want navigational
> > operators, however and that seems to go against relational theory. I
> > want to "click on" a foreign key value and navigate to the referenced
> > entity.
>
> Isn't that user interface, not data modelling theory, though? Seems
> pretty orthogonal to me.

It depends on what the word "user" means. I take Dawn's use of "click on" in quotes to mean a programmatic reference to a foreign key with a (somewhat) automatic join of the data in the home table of that key. This is what people who use pointers mean by "derefencering".

It's a good thing to want. But it is "interface" not data modeling or database design. Received on Thu Sep 08 2005 - 06:36:48 CDT