Re: relational reasoning -- why two tables and not one?
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:43:15 -0300
Message-ID: <4ad7cfb8$0$23743$9a566e8b_at_news.aliant.net>
paul c wrote:
>> paul c wrote: >> >>> Bob Badour wrote: >>> >>>> paul c wrote:
>
> ...
>
>>> The label that means what someone wants it to mean instead of what it >>> means to everybody else. >> >> In the dbms, the label is merely a name for a relation: no more and no >> less. One might as easily use D as Donor. >> >> I am confused. Are you disagreeing with that? >> ...
>
> Not at all, "D" might even be preferable. But when designing tables as
> the unmentioned poster was, it is a good idea to be precise so the
> people in the room who don't know this, aka the small charity, aka the
> man in the street, can better pin down their requirements.
You are mixing analysis and design. Clifford's recent Simsion reference is interesting with respect to that distinction. Certainly, one has to understand what the customer means before one can deliver anything the customer needs. However, the symbol used for a relation is just a symbol.
> That was
> surely the starting context in this thread. I'll grant that it's hard
> for me to put this without sounding as if I'm talking out of both sides
> of my mouth.
I think I am getting a clearer picture of what you mean. It is a mystical idea that one has power over something if only one knows its true name. Whereas in reality, a name is just a convention we use for distinguishing things. Reasonably intelligent creatures get conditioned to respond to a name so the name becomes a means to evoke a response, but that's as far as any power goes.
>> You refer to mysticism a lot, and I remain unsure what you mean by it. >> Does that make me a mystic?
>
> No. Although I hesitate to talk about literacy, not having been
> appointed arbiteer by anybody I know, I will anyway. Being human
> encourages the tendency but unlike many you have probably disciplined
> yourself to resist the urge to portray the db as being more than it is.
> What I resent is the widespread usage of vague and mysterious and
> contextual words so that they become innately secretive words, such as
> "reality", associating them with simple (db) abstractions, especially
> when they generate spurious requirements, as it seemed to in lawpoop's
> mind. He as much as said that his "reality" was unique within the
> discussion he referred to.
>
> Besides spreading it, it's also human to fall for mysticism. Western
> citizens mostly accept the term "freedom of information act" literally
> when the typical application involves secret databases and with-holding,
> not freedom. The list of such terms is nearly endless and much of
> society is inured to the distortions. This doesn't even touch the
> rampant pomposity, at one time "lever" was both a noun and a verb, but
> the verb is no longer sufficient, most people have some strange need to
> make "leverage" into a verb.
> I wouldn't argue if you associated my use of "mystical" with your use of
> that "anthropo..." word I can't spell.
That's certainly one type of mysticism. In this case, I think we have someone acting more like Alice with Humpty Dumpty. The name "donation" means exactly what the person who applied it to a table meant at the time. Received on Fri Oct 16 2009 - 03:43:15 CEST