Re: Distributed foreign keys (was Re: Category Types)

"Mikito Harakiri" <mikharakiri_at_ywho.com> wrote in message news:AYqIa.10$3a.37_at_news.oracle.com... [snip]
> > > Regarding the presentation, for the person who earns no salary, can't we
> > > just assume that the salary is 0? (That is what I thought 0 number
> > > abstraction is for;-)
> >
> > Can you pay me $0.00 for the answer? Check will be fine, just make it out
> > for zero.
>
> No problem, I keeping my payment records in the database already:
>
> table questions (
> question_asked String,
> person_answered String,
> payment Money,
> payment_type String
> -- the answer provided doesn't matter
> );
>
> insert into questions values ('can we assume that the salary is 0?', 'Paul
> Vernon', to_money('$0'), 'check');

Thanks. Now make that a monthly payment to me, so making my annual Salary $0, which (it could be argued) is different than not having a salary at all.

On the other hand, if you constrain all payments to be greater than $0, then a Salary of $0 could be defined as being equivalent to not having a salary, but then why have two ways of representing the same thing?

Regards
Paul Vernon
Business Intelligence, IBM Global Services Received on Fri Jun 20 2003 - 11:37:11 CEST