Re: Idempotence and "Replication Insensitivity" are equivalent ?

Chris Smith wrote:
> Well,
>
> Now that we've got this far, I have to go back and change the problem.
> I said that my definition probably contained errors, didn't I? I found
> a real source to replace my guesswork.

I dont' want to spoil your fun of figuring this out but this is a pretty well studied subject in database theory. There are in fact some nice links with structural recursion in programming language theory and category theory stuff such as monoids. So in case you are wondering about any references:

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/90087.html

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/fegaras98optimizing.html

But again, it's probably more fun to figure this out for yourself. :-)

• Jan Hidders