Re: NULLs: theoretical problems?

From: Jan Hidders <hidders_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 04:20:22 -0700
Message-ID: <1186831222.448413.295160@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>

On Aug 11, 1:52 am, Hugo Kornelis
<h..._at_perFact.REMOVETHIS.info.INVALID> wrote:

>

> I've tried to understand what you're saying here, but there's too much
> jargon (both in terms and in notation) involved for me. Most of what
> I've learned comes from practice, and what theory I did learn was for
> the most part in Dutch. Is there any chance that you repeat this
> argument in layman's terms for me, so that I have at least a chance of
> understanding it?

Heck, I could even explain it in Dutch for you. ;-)

But also then it wouldn't make sense. Any argumentation that is based on taking the definitions in standard normalization theory and applying them to relations with null values is based on a fallacy. If you really want a meaningful discussion you first need to come up with a proper formal definition of a relation with null values, update anomalies, redundancy, dependencies, et cetera. That, by the way, is actually not as hard as you might expect, but it still needs to be done.

• Jan Hidders

Received on Sat Aug 11 2007 - 06:20:22 CDT