Re: Database design

"Marshall Spight" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote:

>Mark Johnson wrote:
>> "Marshall Spight" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote:

>> Even if the set were so ordered?

>Once you order a set, it's not a set any more.

Because by definition, correct? Alright:

>Let's say you have some integers: 1 and 2.

Let's say you have a roster of US Presidents. Surely this is stored in some database, somewhere.

It is entered row by row, tuple by tuple if you will. And their position is entered, as well. While I can understand that one might say the ranking would not necessarily apply, it also might. There is an intrinsic order to the roster, after all. But by definition, that relation can NEVER be sorted?

Or:

>> >> Or is such simply defined out of the realm of possibility,

>> >Yes.

>> But doesn't that just strike you as mere wordplay?

>I say "the formal definition of a mathematical term";
>you say "mere wordplay."

I certainly do. But:

>> If a set is
>> ordered, and one declares it is not, when is it that one can tell the
>> emperor he should put some clothes on?

>If a data structure is ordered, and one calls it a set, one
>has revealed one's lack of understanding of the term.

So a set cannot be ordered because to place it in any order is to redefine it as non-set? So a roster can never be a set and a roster. To become a set, the most important attribute of that set must be discarded?

>> If a building is on fire, I for one would not stand there and say -
>> fire, what fire? Building, what building?

>After the building burned to the ground

But because someone kept saying, and confusing 'first responders' - fire, what fire? Building, what building?

They had to get that information elsewhere. Received on Wed Feb 22 2006 - 20:41:05 CET