Re: Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys

From: David BL <davidbl_at_iinet.net.au>
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 19:58:48 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <4d552af7-5c2d-4631-ba29-da87e77d8ff6_at_y33g2000prg.googlegroups.com>


On May 23, 9:41 am, paul c <toledobythe..._at_oohay.ac> wrote:
> Bob Badour wrote:
> > paul c wrote:
>
> ...
> > 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.
>
> I hate to mention international standards when Celko might be lurking
> around to take the point off into the wild blue yonder but in this case
> I have say that such a system would inevitably be living in an ivory
> tower when it was decided by some pretty big bodies years ago that for
> purposes of comparison, database data exchange or not, a millimeter
> equals 0.03937 inches, period, full stop. So any system that tries to
> handle both millimeters and inches without fixed-point decimal hardware
> will need to include elaborate, intricate software algorithms to do
> elementary arithmetic. To me, this is totally stupid but is perhaps
> another example of your point that regression is more present than
> progress. The countless hours IEEE has spent on floating-point binary
> amazes me, the only explanation I can think of is that humans are more
> comfortable studying what they are familiar with not what they aren't,
> which seems crazy, it's only the occasional human who has the temerity
> to study what he doesn't know.

I haven't read much about the arguments in favour of fixed point decimal hardware, but it seems problematic to me. For a start it isn't closed under multiplication or division. E.g. the product of two numbers that each have n digits after the decimal point may have up to 2n digits after the decimal point. Received on Sat May 23 2009 - 04:58:48 CEST

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