Re: Database design, Keys and some other things

JOG wrote:
> Marshall Spight wrote:
> >
> > Oh, please.
>
> If you were involved in AI research, whose systems have no common sense
> input due to their lack of situatedness, you would realise that these
> distinctions for the foundations of a data structure can be crucial.

You keep saying that, but you don't back it up with anything. You don't provide any formal or even vaguely mathematical arguments, just handwavy ones. You ignore all my requests for clarification, and more conveniently, do not respond to the questions I ask which illustrate what look to me to be dramatic flaws in your arguments. They might not be, but if you won't actually *have* the debate, it's hard to say.

If you want to critique a mathematical model, you could show lack of soundness, lack of completeness, lack of expressiveness. And even if you could do that, it wouldn't mean much unless you could show an alternative that didn't suffer from these problems. This is not a philosophy group, but a theory one. And the particular theory being discussed has a long tradition of rolling up its sleeves and doing work, in the real world I might add.

And by the way, I bump into AI researchers in the lunch line every day, and so far, all the systems they have produced use keys.

> Either way your post is sadly unconstructive, and something I would
> expect to see on Slashdot, not within a database theory discussion.

You ride in here on King Milindi's chariot, make some vague ominous claims about set theory bolstered only by trite anecdotes about "identity", ignore my efforts to engage you, and at the first sign of my impatience, start in with the personal attacks? And you call *me* "unconstructive?" So far I rate your contribution to the newsgroup as negative. If you want a "database theory discussion" then you have to actually have one.

Marshall Received on Thu Sep 29 2005 - 17:01:12 CEST