Re: Conceptual, Logical, and Physical views of data

From: dawn <dawnwolthuis_at_gmail.com>
Date: 8 Sep 2005 08:24:47 -0700
Message-ID: <1126193087.173998.227350_at_f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>


Marshall Spight wrote:
> dawn wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> Everything you can do with pointers you can do with relational
> operators. Pointers are neither necessary nor sufficient for
> "navigation"; that is, finding the data you want.

In that case, the API I use could have what I want, even if behind the scenes it uses relational operators, which behind the scenes use navigation, right?

> Addressing the data by its content, rather than by
> its location,

I'm all for addressing data by its content. I still don't know whether it is proper to call a foreign key a pointer or not, but it is surely data.

> provides a proper superset of the
> functionality of the navigational operators.

Just to be sure I understand this last statement, what do you mean by "addressing data by its content, rather than by its location"? Other than specifying a data source, what would be an example of addressing data by location? Do you consider a base table name to be a location? Thanks.
--dawn

>
> Marshall
Received on Thu Sep 08 2005 - 17:24:47 CEST

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