Re: Nulls, integrity, the closed world assumption and events

Marshall wrote:
> On Jan 14, 10:32 am, "dawn" <dawnwolth..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> > JOG wrote:
> > > However, I am a firm believer that an elegant
> > > theory will lead to good practice.
> >
> > Any elegant theory? That has surely steered us wrong in the past.
>
> That's a clear an anti-theory statement as I expect to see.
> Since you are anti-theory, why are you in a theory newsgroup?

Come on, Marshall, you know that there can be an elegant mathematical theory that should not be applied to this or that. When we are talking about applying theory, rather than advancing the theory in and of itself, there is an additional factor that it needs to be useful. On top of that, there might be another elegant theory that is more useful, so just because a theory is elegant and useful does not make it the best choice.

> Doesn't that make you a creationist in an evolutionary biology
> newsgroup?

if this group were comp.theory.relational or some such, then it would not be related to applying theory, but simply advancing a specific theory, whether an application can be found or not in one area or another. But it is comp.databases.theory which to me implies not just talking about mathematical theory, but its application to databases. In that case, there are surely many mathematical theories that have been applied, and there are choices to make on when to employ what theory. Both two and three-valued logic are theories that can be applied to databases, for example. Discussing which one to use, how to choose one, etc would seem to me to be appropriate in a database theory forum. So, I would think this would be a place to discuss what makes the most sense for databases. Do I have this wrong? --dawn Received on Sun Jan 14 2007 - 21:46:59 CET