Re: atomic

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:52:57 -0300
Message-ID: <472cdfad$0$14833$9a566e8b@news.aliant.net>

paul c wrote:

> dawn wrote:
>

>> On Nov 1, 6:24 pm, paul c <toledobythe..._at_ooyah.ac> wrote:
>>
>>> Roy Hann wrote:
>>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>>> Two indentical-looking tuples can mean entirely different things.  I 
>>>> can
>>>> think of any number of meanings for {Roy, 47}.  Maybe it's my name 
>>>> and age.
>>>> Or my name and the number of illegitimate children I have.  Or maybe 
>>>> it's my
>>>> father's name and his house number.  Who knows, until I tell you?
>>>> Roy
>>>
>>> I'm still looking for an example of a predicate that uses RVA's where an
>>> empty RVA in a tuple makes sense.
>>
>>
>> I suspect that makes sense to me might not to you ;-) but I'll toss
>> out an optional list of keywords in a predicate as a possible empty
>> RVA in a tuple.  Another example is OtherLastNames, FormerLastNames or
>> AliasLastNames.  One row in the tuple might include only a "maiden
>> name" for a person, another might have two other last names used by
>> this person (other than the value of LastName in this row) and a third
>> might be the empty set.  HTH  --dawn
>>

>
> This is the trouble with English, which I believe has hundreds of
> thousands more words than any other language, possibly because most of
> them were stolen from other languages but that's beside the point.
>
> In ordinary talk, it is so deceptively easy to include the ordinary
> adjective "optional" when talking about predicates while ignoring the
> traditional sense of logical predicates that involves quantifiers.
> Things might be clearer if all db talk was conducted in Latin. But I'd
> say it should be or the other, not like CJ Date mixing in his "mutatis
> mutandis" and so forth with his English.

Incidentally, Edsger Dijkstra recommended practising computing science in a second language. Received on Sat Nov 03 2007 - 15:52:57 CDT