Re: attribute name conflicts

>> Does it ever make sense within a given appl'n to have two different relations that use the same attribute name but with different types? <<

The data type is part of the validation and verification process for a data element, so all I can imagine is that you might have different precision and scale for a numeric data type. The liters of gasoline for a car might have a shorter numeric data type than the liters of gasoline for an private airplane and liters of gasoline for a model airplane might have more decimal places. But they are all a quantity of gasoline measured in SI units which are used a fuel for a machine.

But I would not mix alpha, temporal and numeric data types in the representation of an attribute.

But this really should be part of a data dictionary that is part of the implementation of a LOGICAL data model. It is more abstract than a single application. Received on Fri Jun 29 2007 - 15:19:40 CDT