Re: Resiliency To New Data Requirements

JOG wrote:
> All statements are 'structured' otherwise we wouldn't understand them.

I disagree; "structured" implies some complex arrangement of parts. As such, the atomic "nodes" of said structure are (by definition) unstructured. That doesn't mean the user can't define functions over these values' types/domains.

> Hence using the term in that sense is of no use. Similarly all data can
> be put into a relational database, but that hardly makes it a database
> before its there.

An obvious but important point, and well said.

> Structured/Semi-structured/Unstructured terminology has been standard
> for 15 years. Even before that in 1979 Codd himself made exactly the
> same distinctions, except he used the terms formatted and unformatted,
> for structured and unstructured respectively. He just never cemented
> the phrases.

If there are standard definitions for these terms, I'm unaware of them - do you have references?

• erk