Re: Temporal database - no end date

> Actually, Zeno and (much) later Einstein are a good place to start with
> what happens when you think of chronons and infinity-as-process like
> the ancient Greeks (and the rest of the world until Cantor) did.
>
> If I wanted to explain irrational numbers to an ancient Greek, I would
> [snip]

Still nothing but smoke.

>> Is your best, most "logical" argument against the use of intervals
>> over salesman numbers that it "feels weird"? And don't give me the
>> crap about them not being a continuum;

Sorry, I might have been clearer: NOBODY CLAIMS THAT SALESMEN NUMBERS IS A CONTINUUM! That is something you cooked up.

> Go to the Date book; look at the notation on page 122 for example. We
> have suppliers, parts and dates. The parts are expressed the same way
> as the dates -- (s1, [p1:p3], [d01:d04]) is the first row in figure
> 8.1. Is there a part with tag number
> "p1.4142135623730950488016887242097" as implied by the notation?

I don't have the book in front of me, but I very much doubt that the notation implies this.

> But there **is** a similar point in time
> "d01.4142135623730950488016887242097" that occurred.

But we don't care about it.

But I might see something resembling a valid point here. DDL use the term "interval" (iyrc; I don't have the book in front of me) for sets of  discrete, sequential time points (given some granularity)). It seems that your main issue is that the term "interval" should not be used this way, i.e. for something that isn't continuous. This quibble over terminology then leads to your preposterous reading that DDL claim salesmen numbers is a continuum.

In another of your posts (to Marshall) there is a slightly better point: That intervals (or "sequential time point sets" or whatever) with different granularities require some extra effort if they are to be compared. But that is a trivial problem; it's certainly nothing to "freak out" about.

-- 
Jon