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From: "vc" <boston103@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Subject: Re: MV Keys
Date: 3 Mar 2006 06:40:44 -0800
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Jon Heggland wrote:
> In article <GHgNf.26120$_S7.24277@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com>,
> brian@selzer-software.com says...
> > Doesn't the determination of whether a type is scalar or not depend upon the
> > universe of discourse?
>
> In that case, scalar-ness is not a property of a type, but a property of
> the use of a type in a certain context. I'd say that severely reduces
> the usefulness of the concept (if it *has* any usefulness to begin
> with:).
>
> > I think that a string is a scalar if any of the
> > following statements hold: (1) individual character values don't belong to
> > the universe of discourse, (2) the meaning of the individual character
> > values aren't directly augmented by the attribute name, (3) the meaning of
> > the individual character values aren't augmented by their position in the
> > list, or (4) it is only the permutation of character values that has meaning
> > with respect to the containing relation.  For example, the elements in a
> > list of birth dates aren't just dates, they're birth dates;
>
> Speaking of dates, is date a scalar type? Its components (year, month,
> day) do belong to the universe of discourse in most cases.

Saying that the date is not scalar is akin to claiming that 254 is not
a scalar because it consists of units, tens and hundreds  ;)

> -- 
> Jon