Re: atomic

David BL wrote:
...
>> I think of these as symmetrical REFERENCE'ing statements and they are
>> implicit from the choice of attributes of a relation. For me, this
>> means that the orthodox view is that the form of optional data must
>> involve more than one relation. So if set-valued attributes are
>> eligible in the orthodox framework, I think I'd want to be able to say
>> similar sentences about them.

> 
> Are you saying you want to make statements about sets without those
> statements being reinterpreted as instead applying to the elements of
> the sets?
> ...

I'm not sure if I understand you but at first glance I'd say no, that's not what I "want". I think if there is missing information then we can't express that in a conventional RM theory without multiple relations. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I think RM allows sets to make statements about something we're interested in whereas statements about those sets are something else. Received on Wed Nov 07 2007 - 04:25:28 CET