Re: Database design, Keys and some other things

From: mAsterdam <mAsterdam_at_vrijdag.org>
Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:23:39 +0200
Message-ID: <4342f224$0$11078$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>

Marshall Spight wrote:
> Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>

>>Marshall  Spight wrote:
>>[snip]
>>
>>>We were discussing whether there was a difference between
>>>the natures of external ids vs. surrogate keys. What is
>>>essential to this question is what their nature is. Generally
>>>we do not regard context-specific considerations as essential.
>>
>>     Was it murder or self-defence?  Context.

>
> There are many domains where this sort of context is relevant.
> Mathematics is not on the list, however. Whether a number is
> an integer or not is not context-dependent. Given what's been
> said on this thread so far about the difference, it looks to
> me similar to the difference between the primary key and other
> candidate keys; a psychological, non-mathematical, contextual
> difference.
>
> This is not to say that it's irrelevant. There may be significant
> software engineering and/or usability issues involved. But it
> does say that the difference has no particular theoretical basis.

This reads like:

Whenever something isn't mathematical, it has no theoretical basis. Whenever context matters, it can't be mathematical, because in mathematics, context is irrelevant.
Ergo context has no theoretical basis.

Is that your point of view? Received on Tue Oct 04 2005 - 16:23:39 CDT