Re: Mixing OO and DB

On Feb 11, 12:44 pm, David BL <davi..._at_iinet.net.au> wrote:
> On Feb 11, 8:07 pm, JOG <j..._at_cs.nott.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 11, 2:05 am, David BL <davi..._at_iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 11, 3:29 am, JOG <j..._at_cs.nott.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 10, 5:45 pm, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail..._at_dmitry-kazakov.de>
> > > > wrote:
> > > > > [What is data, in your opinion?
>
> > > > Data. Lots of datum - from latin, meaning statement of fact. Predicate
> > > > and value in FOL. A value without description is of course just
> > > > noise.
>
> > > Latin datum is past participle of dare, "to give". What make you say
> > > data is necessarily a set of propositions?
>
> > The OED. "Facts, esp. numerical facts, collected together for
> > reference or information." The etymology stems from 'dare', because
> > facts are always communicated or "given". I understand of course that
> > the term is thrown around wantonly and ambiguosly nowadays, but as
> > data theorists, we shouldn't be party to that imo ;)
> > > Are you suggesting a value
> > > is meaningless without a proposition? Why can't a datum just be a
> > > value?
>
> > Because ta value has to be associated with something. Hofstadter gave
> > a good example of this with the groove modulations on a vinyl record.
> > To us they are (musical) data, to an alien not knowing their context,
> > it is not. You need the context.
>
> > > Wouldn't you say a recorded image is data?
>
> > Of course, so long as I know it's an image. If its just ones and
> > zero's stored in a computer, without anyway of telling they represent
> > a picture, then it is simply noise.
>
> Let's indeed assume we know how to interpret the 1's and 0's as an
> image. So what have we got? Nothing but a *value*.

No, you now have a value with applied context. That creates a fact. You now therefore have data. It's simple to show - consider "1000001". Thats currently a value, but its not data. Its only data when I store it, and state one of the following:

"100001" is a text string
"100001" is an integer (i.e. 65)
"100001" is an ascii character (i.e. A)

> We can display
> it. We can comment on whether we like it - even if we haven't a clue
> where it came from. But I don't see any sense in which the image
> value gives us any statements of fact beyond the specification of a
> value. A value simply "is".
>
> I would suggest that a lot of the data in the world is characterised
> more closely as "interesting values" than collections of
> propositions.

You cannot store these interesting values without implicitly stating some fact about them.

> For example a recorded poem is an interesting value.
> So also a movie, mp3, book, web page or source code listing.
Received on Mon Feb 11 2008 - 15:08:30 CET