Re: Plural or singular table names

"Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote in message news:cZO4b.317$8v7.33990779_at_mantis.golden.net... [snip]
> > > From a theory standpoint, it's just a name. X and Y are as good as any other
> > > names.
> >
> > That depends on where you draw the theory line in the sand. If you are interested
> > only in say the mathamatics of relational algebra, then indeed the names are not
very
> > important, but even then 'X' would be prefered to say 'XAS$%£^AF"sgrSFPI' by
most.
>
> The point is the preference is psychological and not based on any particular
> theory. Different people will have different psychological needs leading to
> different preferences.
>
>
> > If you prefer to not draw a line between the theory and the practical,
> > then there is no reason why a 'theory of names' cannot be considered.
>
> I don't draw a line between theory and practice. I draw a line between
> theory and biological empiricism.
>
> > Such a theory would surly be
> > able to tell us that
> >
> > { Loves, Loved }
> >
> > would be better attribute names than
> >
> > { X, Y }
>
> Why?
>
>
> > or
> >
> > { Cabbage, Potato }
>
> Why?
>
>
> > and certain much better than
> >
> > { Hates, Hated }
>
> Why?
>
>
> > for a tuple purporting to represent predicates of the form
> >
> > "Juliet loves Romeo"
>
> The predicate and not the name provides the semantic context. Consider the
> following relation:

Others (some quite notable) would agree with you Bob, but I don't.

My objection to this emphasis on predicates providing semantic contexts is the implication (to me) that then they must therefore be *mandatory* for every tuple in every database. For tuples that are the result of a query, either the system must then derive the resulting predicate for us (which I know of no general method for, especially in the face of user defined operators), or we need a way of giving out own predicates for every query result!
If predicates are not mandatory, then how do we know what a given database means? How can knowing what a database means be a 'nice to have'? Where are Chris Date's 'external predicates' stored? In the heads of individual users?

> Rottweiler:
>
> Cabbage Potato Turnip
> ====== ===== =====
> Juliet loves Romeo
> Romeo loves Juliet
> Osama hates America
>
> It won't read like english in the predicate calculus, but that won't affect
> the objective meaning of the predicate.

But you have not told me the predicate of that relation. It is meaningless to me. By your scheme, the predicate can just as well be

    "Person Cabbage has the word Potato tattooed on their body because of thing Turnip"
as it could be

    "Person Cabbage looked up the word Potato in a dictionary while thinking about thing Turnip"

or *any meaning whatsoever*

By your scheme a relation means nothing without specifying it's external predicate, and therefore 99% of the relations ever sketched in books and 99.999% of tables in SQL databases have no meaning.

I believe than needing to define an external predicate for every tuple type is much too much work. Therefore I say the that the tuple type itself should be (a reasonable approximation) for the predicate.

> I am not saying I prefer vegetable names; I am only saying the bottom line
> of the issue is it is a matter of preference or of psychology.

We are not blank slates you know. We do have some innate preferences. The preference for meaningful names is not a 'matter of preference', it's just the way our (and any) mind works.

If preferences are universal (especially if they would be universal in any conceivable intelligent entity), then they are certainly suitable for inclusion on the theory side of any line in the sand.

Regards
Paul Vernon
Business Intelligence, IBM Global Services Received on Mon Sep 01 2003 - 23:58:24 CEST