Re: Guessing?

Brian Selzer wrote:
> "paul c" <toledobysea_at_ac.ooyah> wrote in message
> news:13V_j.168060$rd2.163010_at_pd7urf3no...

>> Brian Selzer wrote:
>> ...
>>> In TTM, Darwin raises objections to such a strict form of orthogonality, 
>>> and I agree: it's a problem to disallow more than one relationship 
>>> between things, and in the case of unary relations, it's a problem to 
>>> disallow something from having more than one property.  (Page 436 if 
>>> you're interested.)
>>> ...
>>
>> Anything Hugh DarwEn says is likely to be important or at least 
>> provocative, but how does POOD disallow multiple relationships or 
>> properties?

I'm all for natural when it comes to the pleasures of the flesh and willing to put up with it when it comes to the unavoidable emotions but tantalizing motives can lead to insidious effects at times. The logic that a dbms follows may have a long lineage, but that doesn't make it natural.

Presuming the example is hinting at a union view for employees who are unavailable by 'phone and that Employee is the preferred (or 'natural' if you like) attribute name then I'd say the person who defines that view without any precautions might be asking for trouble, at least according to people who think inserting to both base relations would pervert their predicates. If that's what you're driving at, I still don't see why the dbms should be held responsible - that would be a...-phizing the dbms once again! (I find it easier to type pteradactyl than that word of Bob B's.)

If somebody wants to insist that those base predicates are natural, then presumably they would call inserting to both base relations 'unnatural'.   But I would have a hard time agreeing with a prohibition against a consistent logic on the grounds that it is thought to be 'unnatural'! Now, 'useless' is quite another matter. Received on Wed May 28 2008 - 02:58:29 CEST