Re: Lookup Tables, the right way?

The Relational Model is not a two-dimiensional model. It's an n-dimensional model. I think it's more logical to work with atomic values in n-dimensional relations--because then you know implicitly how to find those values in case they need to be changed--than to embed values that can (and in my opinion should) stand on their own within lists or bags or lists of lists, such that you need to query the schema not only to determine which mechanism to use to extract or update each value, but also to determine where to look to find all of the duplicate instances.

<michael_at_preece.net> wrote in message news:1142416556.729380.112140_at_p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
> In the Pick environment you can use the Pick DBMS to persist data or
> you can use the host OS's file system - or any other physical media,
> including that accessible through a relational database. Sometimes it
> makes sense to organise data into a two-dimensional matrix with, say,
> columns represting one dimension and columns the other. Sometimes it
> doesn't. The designer is free to choose whichever model is most
> logical. A willingness to be constrained to a two-dimensional model is
> what we call adherence to the illogical model.
>
> Mike.
>
Received on Wed Mar 15 2006 - 13:49:39 CET