Re: what are keys and surrogates?
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:54:57 +0100
Message-ID: <f387a$47b48071$839b4533$30541_at_news1.tudelft.nl>
JOG wrote:
>Ok, so if I read you right, you have been supplied with some facts
No, that is not right. The facts (more accurately: updates)
look like this:
A, the son of B, the son of C, the son of A, the son of A, the son of
>such as:
>
>1) A and B begat C
>2) C and D begat A
>3) A and E begat F
>etc.
etc.
>Your argument is that, because A is the name of two people (obviously
>A and C can't be the parents of each other) we should use OID's to
>distinguish them. Have I read you correctly there?
I'm afraid not. Did you look at the Jesus example?
>Just imagine the query:
>User: "Did A beget F?"
>DB: "I don't know. Its ambiguous. What's the OID of the A you are
>talking about"
>User: "You know what, strangely I don't seem to be able to find that
>in the bible..."
It is exactly the *point* of the example that names alone do *not* identify persons, while every person is still fully identifiable in the database, owing to the oids. (And constraints such as the ones I mentioned.)
-- ReinierReceived on Thu Feb 14 2008 - 18:54:57 CET