Re: attribute name conflicts
From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:55:26 -0300
Message-ID: <4683311c$0$4329$9a566e8b_at_news.aliant.net>
>
>
> Thanks, yes I did mis-type and meant it the way you put it.
>
> Regarding "capacity", I think I'd prefer for an app to use the three
> different names: "volume", "weight" and "energy". My main reason
> (psychological) would be that I find it helpful to have as much
> transparency as possible (as one might gather from reading my frequent
> mis-typings) but a technical reason might be that then I wouldn't need
> to deal with "exceptions" (I presume that an expression like "A JOIN B"
> where A and B use the "capacity" attribute name for different types
> would, in the purest sense, be considered not well-formed, ie., it would
> not be strictly logical to give a result such as "empty" or "false" for
> such an expresssion.)
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:55:26 -0300
Message-ID: <4683311c$0$4329$9a566e8b_at_news.aliant.net>
paul c wrote:
>> paul c wrote: >> ... >> Did you perhaps mistype and mean: "Does it ever make sense within a >> given application (as opposed to within a given db) to have two >> different *attributes with identical names* that identify different >> types/domains?" >> >> If so, I would say: Yes, absolutely. While I would expect the much >> more common case is for similarly named attributes to have the same >> type, I can imagine all sorts of cases where one might use the same >> name for different types of things. >> >> Capacity might mean a volume in one case, a weight in another case and >> stored energy in a third case.
>
>
> Thanks, yes I did mis-type and meant it the way you put it.
>
> Regarding "capacity", I think I'd prefer for an app to use the three
> different names: "volume", "weight" and "energy". My main reason
> (psychological) would be that I find it helpful to have as much
> transparency as possible (as one might gather from reading my frequent
> mis-typings) but a technical reason might be that then I wouldn't need
> to deal with "exceptions" (I presume that an expression like "A JOIN B"
> where A and B use the "capacity" attribute name for different types
> would, in the purest sense, be considered not well-formed, ie., it would
> not be strictly logical to give a result such as "empty" or "false" for
> such an expresssion.)
Whether such a join would cause an exception is a matter of applied psychology and not theory. Received on Thu Jun 28 2007 - 05:55:26 CEST