Re: Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys
Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 01:10:34 GMT
Message-ID: <e2IRl.29076$PH1.27808_at_edtnps82>
Bob Badour wrote:
> paul c wrote:
>
>> Bob Badour wrote: >> >>> paul c wrote: >>>
...
>>>> Oh, just remembered another one - fixed-point decimal arithmetic! >>> >>> What do you need that for? >> >> To get the same answer as the lawyer with his amortization tables.
>
> Integers are integers no matter the base.
Sure they are, but I was talking about decimal points. Eg., it bugs me that the most widely-used (that doesn't mean most popular) cpu 'architecture', Intel's, can't express the fraction 2/5 exactly. Maybe that fraction isn't too bad, can't remember the really awful ones at the moment.
Now, here's another one: Codd wrote his first database paper around 1969, forty years ago this year, where's the hardware support for relational algebra? The steam engine revolution (no pun intended) made faster progress than that nearly three centuries ago. I'll grant that the Future System/System 400 from IBM nibbled around the edges of db theory but never did distinguish physical from logical, sometimes I wonder whether Codd studied that while he was being paid to study IMS. Received on Sat May 23 2009 - 03:10:34 CEST