Re: Resiliency To New Data Requirements

erk wrote:
> dawn wrote:
> > Yes, I've read those terms. I do understand the use of "unstructured"
> > within an attribute value, such as an attribute whose value is a
> > document. That doesn't make the whole unstructured. The fact that a
> > database holds music doesn't make the database any less structured.
> > There can be a structured database that includes unstructured attribute
> > values.
>
> The word "structured" here is a waste of time. To use a programming
> analogy, a 10,000 line program of imperative spaghetti code has
> structure - one could argue too much, of the graph sort, while too
> little of the module sort or function sort. "Structured" as a boolean
> (or fuzzy-logic) function isn't the point -

Sorry, I thought that was the topic at hand. I understand that discussions about which structure something takes might be of more interest. But I do think there is a distinction between what is structured text and what is unstructured text. Unstructured text would be treated by a database like an attribute with values that are mp3's, except character compard to binary data. Any structure to the data sits above (or below) this unstructured data.

> what matters is which
> structures we're discussing.

I agree that is also relevant, but would not want to dismiss the relevance of talking about structured vs unstructured data.

> "Unstructured" just means uninterpreted in a given context, and that
> means a type or domain in the control of the users.

Yes!

> > R(URL, html, foreignKeyList)
> >
> > That's some structure, right?
>
> Sure - without the pesky underlying semantics. Each user of a piece of
> such a "structure" is going to need to layer semantics atop this, with
> functions to decompose and combine pieces of it.

Sure, there is a lot that can be done with such a structure. Perhaps we only disagree on the double quotes around the word structure ;-)

> > For the subset of the web with xhtml
> > backed by a schema, we would perhaps be able to show more structure.
>
> None of the rules you'd find useful on any cohesive component of this
> structure can be expressed using the structure. "Showing more"
> structure is just a matter of derivation and interpretation (like
> showing that a point in time is "decomposable" into a month, day, and
> year in the Gregorian calendar).

Agreed, I think.

> > Maybe I'm misunderstanding the use of these terms, but I reallly,
> > really dislike the term "semi-structured" for data that has a
> > structure. --dawn
>
> "Structured" means, roughly, having a form or pattern of composition
> (assumes component parts). In that sense, every "node" of a structure
> is equally unstructured (all domains are equal, and while each can have
> functions which evaluate to values of some type, these functions are
> all orthogonal to the structure).

Yes. So are we then agreed that the web has a structure, even if every node is equally unstructured? --dawn Received on Thu Aug 17 2006 - 17:31:33 CEST