Re: The horse race

Bob Hairgrove <invalid_at_bigfoot.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 20 Feb 2006 17:37:04 -0800, Mark Johnson
><102334.12_at_compuserve.com> wrote:

>>If one were to bet on the horses, a database could be used to store
>>such information, quantitative, even vague and cryptic observations of
>>use only to the diarist, if you will.

>>Perhaps one could turn to the RM. One might list the horses by stable.
>>One might list the horse, per race, and gate. The gate becomes merely
>>an attribute for that relation.

>>But how far does one carry that? Horses are money-winners. Some win
>>more, some less. And they can be ranked. Their ranking is yet another
>>attribute, in another relation. At what point can one say that the
>>relation is sorted, which is a violation of the RM, as I understand
>>it?

>What do you mean by "how far does one carry that"? All your examples
>are typical of cursors, not relations. Every time you say "list",
>think "cursor". Cursors are always sorted, but relations are not.

No that's a relation. In describing a race, the attributes might include, gate. The gates are ordered.

But as I understand it, relations are not supposed to be sorted. So I wondered that if a relation includes a horse's ranking, as a 'thing' intrinsic, that one is trying to say that relations can be sorted?

>So the question is, what do you want to model?

How about the example, above? Received on Tue Feb 21 2006 - 04:23:54 CST