Re: Mixing OO and DB

From: JOG <jog_at_cs.nott.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:13:19 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <ff429e0f-7b43-4593-8e67-631b373ad173_at_n75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>


On Feb 16, 5:29 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> JOG wrote:
> > On Feb 15, 5:27 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> >>JOG wrote:
>
> >>>On Feb 14, 2:04 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> >>>>[snip]
> >>>>If it is represented suitably for machine processing, it is data.
>
> >>>So before computers there was no data? Really?
>
> >>Of course there was. Computers are not the only machines.
>
> > So when Galileo was looking through a telescope recording his
> > observations on paper, what machine was that data for? Or when
> > biologists were describing dodo's in their log books, again, what
> > machine was that data for?
>
> Pointing to some information that isn't data and observing that it is
> not data doesn't demonstrate anything. Okay, some information is not
> data. The standard vocabularies already make that clear.

I think you misunderstand me. I am saying that the observations Galileo took down in his logbook /was/ data. It never went near machine processing (certainly not in his lifetime), but it was still data.

The ISO definition is inadequate for use in a formal domain (it just sounds like committee generated flim flam to me to be honest).

>
> > Nope, the "machine processing" definition just doesn't cut it imo.
>
> So, you are saying the gradations marked on a yardstick are not data.
> You are suggesting that the machinery Brahe used for mapping the skies
> didn't yield any data just because Brahe took the measurement as
> recorded on the machinery and wrote it on vellum. On the machinery it
> was both information and data, and on the vellum it was information.
>
> Likewise, you are suggesting a number recorded in beads on an abacus is
> not data.
>
> >>>>It has
> >>>>value to the recipient as data because it evokes some emotion or image
> >>>>and because a machine can store it, transmit it, reformat it etc. The
> >>>>poem is also a fact. The poem doesn't convey a fact. It is one. Poem P
> >>>>says Blah.
>
> >>>>[misguided argument snipped]
Received on Sat Feb 16 2008 - 19:13:19 CET

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