Re: Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 22:21:30 -0300
Message-ID: <4a174f8c$0$23747$9a566e8b_at_news.aliant.net>
paul c wrote:
> 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.
Sure it can, as long as you count things in fifths or tenths. I once worked with a product that measured distances in 2032nds of an inch so that a 16th of an inch and a millimeter were each an integer multiple of the base unit.
> 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.
The database industry regressed for the past 20 years. I suggest that's more alarming than a lack of progress. Received on Sat May 23 2009 - 03:21:30 CEST