Re: The horse race

From: Volker Hetzer <volker.hetzer_at_ieee.org>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:22:09 +0100
Message-ID: <dtf7mh$id5$1@nntp.fujitsu-siemens.com>

David Cressey schrieb:
> "Mark Johnson" <102334.12_at_compuserve.com> wrote in message

>>> 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.

>
> The gates aren't really ordered. The locations of the gates are ordered,
> and the numbers painted on the gates are ordered, but the gates themselves
> are not ordered.

Or, to be more precise, one could define a variety of orders over the gates, like latitude, longitude, date/time of building, numbering, distance from left/right, even alphabetically according the the name of the horse or jockey in them for a particular race.
Given the right attributes you can sort according to all those orders in your database.

Whether a few grams of paint (the number on the gate) is "related" to a particular gate is an entirely different matter and has nothing to do with any ordering.

There's no "intrinsic" order for anything. Just the way you choose to order.

Lots of Greetings!
Volker Received on Tue Feb 21 2006 - 08:22:09 CST