Re: atomic

"Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote in message news: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.

Yo también lo recomiendo. Received on Sun Nov 04 2007 - 13:25:52 CET