Re: Database design, Keys and some other things

From: David Cressey <david.cressey_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 12:22:59 GMT
Message-ID: <DQa_e.4897$QE1.1289_at_newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net>


"Marshall Spight" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote in message news:1127799407.754373.267390_at_g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

> How can you derive age if birthdate isn't an attribute of the
> person? Where would you get the birthdate from?

The decomposition of the universe into entities and attributes is somewhat subjective. (See the discussion of "nominalism" elsewhere in this thread).

The modeling of attributes is somewhat situation dependent, much as we would like to pretend that it is not.

If I'm creating a data model for a personnel system, I'm going to model "date of birth" as an attribute of a person.

If I'm creating a data model for a maternity ward, I'm going to model "date of birth" as an attribute of a birth.
The person(s) born would inherit the attribute due to their relationship to the birth.

It's a different model for a different situation. Received on Tue Sep 27 2005 - 14:22:59 CEST

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