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_at_news.aliant.net>
>
> 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.
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2007 17:52:57 -0300
Message-ID: <472cdfad$0$14833$9a566e8b_at_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 - 21:52:57 CET