Re: In an RDBMS, what does "Data" mean?

"Anthony W. Youngman" <wol_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:PRhkvREyG7vAFwzu_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk...
> [SNIP]
> But if you can't come up with some formal way of converting between
> "real-world-data" and "relational tuples", then surely you have to come
> to the conclusion (which my and Dawn's EXPERIENCE has forced us to) that
> your tuple is equivalent to a Copernican circle - it may be close to
> reality but there's something seriously wrong somewhere that needs
> correcting - and it CAN'T be done WITHIN the theory, because the fault
> lies in the theory-to-reality map.

True, but I have yet to hear a better proposal. When it comes to modeling information, I suspect there will always be a gap. Relational advocates favor being able to derive truths from other truths, acknowledging of course that the internal predicates must be defined relative to an external one, and that that's a human effort which can always go awry. You and Dawn, as best I can understand, place more value on reproduction of the original inputs. I suspect there are simply different expectations; I'd rather stretch the computer to avoid stretching humans in ways they're not good at (e.g. repetitive symbolic manipulation).

• erk