Re: Impossible Database Design?

From: Marshall <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com>
Date: 17 May 2006 07:54:25 -0700
Message-ID: <1147877665.186200.314270@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

-CELKO- wrote:

> It also
> uses a "Chronons" (discrete points of time) model for temporal data,
> which is rejected by virtually all of the temporal database academics
> because it fails to model time as a continuum.

I don't see the problem. I am fairly confident that computers cannot fully model a continuum, because of the difficulties with infinity. The real numbers form a continuum--there are an infinite number of them between 0 and 1. I note that, despite the importance of real numbers, we use instead floats: finite, discrete points on the number line. It works reasonably well, and I'm not aware that there's any way to do it better. (Besides adding more precision.)

As I mentioned earlier, Java's Date class (irony?) uses a 64 bit long as milliseconds, giving it millisecond resolution, and the ability to represent dates crazy-far into the future. But we would have to describe it as "discrete points of time." Specifically milliseconds.

Marshall Received on Wed May 17 2006 - 09:54:25 CDT