Re: Temporal database - no end date

Frank Hamersley wrote:
> Marshall wrote:
> > On Jan 20, 6:28 pm, "DBMS_Plumber" wrote:
> [..]
> >> WHAT is the Mean Time To Failure in the example I gave, given the DDL
> >> temporal model? 0 'chronons'/'time quanta'? 1 'chronons'/'time quanta'?
> >> What?
> >>
> >> It's a REALLY simple example. It's a REALLY simple question.
>
> [..]
>
> > As near as I can tell, Bob has already addressed any points your
> > example brings up. What exactly are you thinking you're
> > proving by asking the question of what the average of
> > 1, 1, 1, 1, and 0 is? The average is 0.8.
>
> Ye Gods!

 Le sigh.

 Yeah Frank. You see the standards to which we have so easily become acustomed.

 Let me explain it to Marshall, again.

 The answer "0.8 quanta" is not possible in the Date / Darwen / Lorentzos system, because (quoting them here - I'm the only one who's read the damn book, apparently) "Formally, however, time points are indeed points - they are indivisble, and the concept of duration strictly does not apply." You can't have "0.8" of a time quantum, because as DDL explicitly state, quantum are "indivisible".

  Because you can't use the DDL model to solve a wide variety of problems I, Joe, most folk who uses math to analyse time, and consequently most of the temporal DBMS research community, are obliged to reject the DDL model of time because it isn't a practical framework to model temporal operations. It's OK if you want to store information about time, but that's only one of the many functions a DBMS provides.

  For making this screamingly obvious point, for quoting the authors and examining their ideas, for providing examples to illustrate our objections (all of which were ignored), those of us outside the cult on this point have been vilified. Received on Sun Jan 21 2007 - 19:22:54 CET