Re: Temporal database - no end date

>>And as we all know: in science, everything is determined by majority vote. <<

False comparison. In logic, we know we have a problem when the real world and the logical system do not match. Zeno's paradoxes were written off by Aristotle as sophisms; he never answered them. In fact, nobody really did realize that Zeno was on to something until we got the concept of a continuum of real numbers and calculus.

Chronons are rejected by the majority of Temporal DB researchers for logical reasons, not religiious ones.

>> And the logical impossibility of tachyons is of course directly applicable to how we choose to model limited aspects of reality in our database systems. <<

This is called an analogy. People wrote a lot of stuff on tachyons for awhile and SF stories has field day with them; they were de-throned by simple logic. Same reason chronons are out of favor.

>> And in Java, you can use the same operators on a list of Apple objects as on a list of Orange objects. <<

Will those same list operators work on a continuum, say an exponental function ? Nope. Can I take the first derivative of a list of Apple objects, a discrete finite data structure? Nope.

Since you are being funny, try this Old joke I use to explain data types in class:

Teacher: "John, what is 6 times 7?"
John: "ahhhhh ... Thursday!"
Teacher: "NO! Billy, what is 6 times 7?" Billy: "Red!"
Teacher: "NO! Mary, what is 6 times 7?"
Mary: "The answer is 42!"
Teacher: "Yes! Tell John and Billy how you got it." Mary: "I divided red by Thursday." Received on Wed Jan 17 2007 - 23:31:53 CST