Re: Stupid Database Tricks

"Keith H Duggar" <duggar_at_alum.mit.edu> wrote in message news:1181500919.242750.152950_at_n4g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> Brian Selzer wrote:
>> Marshall wrote:
>> > If the table has only two columns, as I specified, then it
>> > [value1,value2] is necessarily unique, by the definition of
>> > relation. Even it it wasn't, as may be the case in badly
>> > executed SQL tables, there is still no value in adding an
>> > additional column which will contain no further information.
>>
>> The problem is not that the key values aren't unique within a single
>> extension of the database, it is that a key value may identify one object
>> in
>> the universe in one extension and a different object in another. A
>> surrogate key solves this problem because there is a bijective mapping
>> between the values in the surrogate domain and all possible objects in
>> the
>> universe of discourse.
>
> There is no such "object" as an "object". If you stop thinking
> in terms of "objects" and "entities" then you will stop having
> the fake problems which lure you to the surrogate ID crutch.
>

I would have to stop thinking altogether: without objects there can be no conception; without objects there can be no perception; without objects there can be no discourse!

(Perhaps I should have used the term "individual" instead of "object" to avoid confusion.)

> It's be disccused here many times that "object" is a non-idea,
> a semantic vacuum, a useless crutch substituting thought that
> leads only to confusion and problems. You can see here, now,
> the mis-steps one takes when they confuse their thinking with
> "entity" or "object" non-sense.
>

Formal semantics involves interpretation--that is, mapping terms within sentential formulae to objects in the universe of discourse. Without objects, all you have left is a meaningless collection of symbols organized in a meaningless way.

> As an exercise, try rewriting your paragraph above without using
> "object", "entity", "thing" or other such void concepts. In other
> words, try to actually say some"thing" ;-)
>

They are not void concepts.

> Keith -- Fraud 6
>
Received on Mon Jun 11 2007 - 10:40:08 CEST