Re: Surrogate Keys: an Implementation Issue

From: Brian Selzer <brian_at_selzer-software.com>
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 17:40:20 GMT
Message-ID: <84Nyg.137576$dW3.40838_at_newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>


What's the point of a database if it doesn't reflect some aspect of reality. Assertions are worthless without a frame of reference. A database can only guarantee consistency, not correctness. Therefore, the truth of a statement comes from without the database, that is, from reality. With surrogates, I can extract more meaning from a database by being able to determine which premises changed and how. I can also to avoid the problems that I described earlier. Your statement underscores your complete lack of understanding and, quite frankly, paints you with the same colors as Bob Badour, who with infantile and malicious comments seeks only to goad.

"paul c" <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac> wrote in message news:hDMyg.268363$IK3.96263_at_pd7tw1no...
> Brian Selzer wrote:
>> Your points are well taken. A relation value is a set of statements of
>> fact. I think it's important to be able to determine whether or not the
>> reality underpinning one of those statements changed from one database
>> state to the next, and to a limited extent, how. This requires the
>> ability to correlate the premises in one database state to those in the
>> next. This is not possible using the operations available in the
>> Relational Model without knowing for certain that there is a candidate
>> key on each affected relation whose values will remain constant
>> throughout an update. I may be guilty of conflating terms when I speak
>> of updating the wrong row, but the problems I described in my earlier
>> post are real.
>> ...
>
> Six-foot bunny rabbits are real to some people too. It doesn't follow
> that reality underpins a giant rabbit database.
>
> p
>
Received on Sat Jul 29 2006 - 19:40:20 CEST

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