Re: Mixing OO and DB

On Feb 7, 1:00 pm, Tegiri Nenashi <TegiriNena..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 7, 12:35 pm, Victor Porton <por..._at_narod.ru> wrote:
>
> > I know both object oriented programming and DB (SQL). But it seems
> > that these are incompatible.
>
> I suggest that OO ideas are too naive to continue influence
> programming. Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is much more theoretically
> sound method how to organize things into taxonomies.
>
> Here is an example -- a hierarchy of living things, restricted to the
> set {Lamprey, Trout, Lungfish, ..., Human}. FCA starts with feature
> matrix like this:
>
>                    Jaws Limbs   Hair    Lungs   Tail    Shell
> Lamprey 0       0       0       0       1       0
> Trout               1   0       0       0       1       0
> Lungfish        1       0       0       1       1       0
> Turtle              1   1       0       1       1       1
> Cat                 1   1       1       1       1       0
> Gorilla             1   1       1       1       0       0
> Human               1   1       1       1       0       0
>
> Then, the objects and the attributes (aka concepts) organize
> themselves into a lattice like this
>
> Lamprey -> Trout -> Lungfish -> Cat -> Gorilla
>                        |         |
>                        |         ---> Human
>                        |
>                        ----> Turtle
>
> which is more powerful concept than OO hierarchy of classes. Each FCA
> concept is essentially a limited form of a relation.

It should be pointed out that biological taxonomies are often not an appropriate test of variations-on-a-theme management techniques for many domains. This is because biology is based on descent-based evolution; while other domain items, such as Apple Widgets are not, and are composed of a buffet-like mix-and-match of features based on S. Job's whims. He can make a Tiger-Crab if he wants, but evolution won't (unless Monsanto goes mad).

>
> There are some reasons why FCA methods never enjoyed a success
> comparable to OO and Relational Model. They are simply more
> restrictive sets of relations which obey distributive property, why
> relations in general don't.

-T- Received on Thu Feb 07 2008 - 23:42:22 CET