Path: text.usenetserver.com!out01a.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!in02.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!pd7cy1no!pd7cy2no!shaw.ca!pd7urf3no.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail X-Trace-PostClient-IP: 24.84.208.66 From: paul c User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (Macintosh/20070728) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory Subject: Re: RM formalism supporting partial information References: <1195048037.452393.204120@y27g2000pre.googlegroups.com> <473b1fdc$0$5270$9a566e8b@news.aliant.net> <1195078888.418889.74500@e34g2000pro.googlegroups.com> <92ecb0fc-eb59-417c-9327-a8a0a80a47c5@i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com> <473ba482$0$5273$9a566e8b@news.aliant.net> In-Reply-To: <473ba482$0$5273$9a566e8b@news.aliant.net> X-No-Archive: yes Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 19 Message-ID: Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 02:04:25 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.59.144.75 X-Complaints-To: abuse@shaw.ca X-Trace: pd7urf3no 1195092265 64.59.144.75 (Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:04:25 MST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:04:25 MST Organization: Shaw Residential Internet Xref: usenetserver.com comp.databases.theory:167329 X-Received-Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:04:25 EST (text.usenetserver.com) Bob Badour wrote: ... > > He also said an attribute is a set of values. Not saying I'll ever get past the first page but I feel fairly comfortable with the first couple of "paragraphs", even if an ellipsis might be missing and even though I would have rather seen attribute described as a pair the way D&D do - my reason for this is that it might be easier to compare with whatever the later pages say, eg., avoiding words like "consists". (Maybe this is only because my pet peeve in RM talk and IT in general is that the common vocabulary is way too large; a lesser peeve is that some words are way over-used but I think my lesser peeve is the pet peeve of many other people, "object" is an example - I'd say it's what Edward de Bono called a porridge word.) Do the first few paragraphs really say an attribute is a set of values? (I saw the bit about a domain being a set of values which doesn't seem untoward to me.)