Re: Impossible Database Design?

-CELKO- wrote:
...
[Temporal data and the relational model by Date, Darwen & Lorentzos]
> 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.

And "Chronons" failing to model time as a continuum is bad because ...?
Do you know some of the academics' arguments?

This is what DD&L say about it (p62, note 8.):

"It seems to us that the confusion over whether chronons and granules are intervals stems from a confusion over intuition vs. formalism. An intuitive belief about the way the world works is one thing; a formal model is something else entirely. In particular, we might /believe/ the timeline is continuous and infinite, but we nevertheless /model/ it for computing purposes as discrete and finite."

> A better and cheaper cholice would be to download the PDF book by Rick
> Snodgrass at the University of Arizona website. Rick has been doing
> temporal RDBMS work for over 20+ years and has actual SQL code in the
> major dialects in his book, as well as accepted theoretical basis.
>
Received on Wed May 17 2006 - 13:58:03 CDT