Re: computational model of transactions

"Brian Selzer" <brian_at_selzer-software.com> wrote in message news:AKTAg.1198$1f6.1097_at_newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...
>
> "J M Davitt" <jdavitt_at_aeneas.net> wrote in message
> news:FDSAg.63277$Eh1.44696_at_tornado.ohiordc.rr.com...

> > I think GW triggered on *always* in the phrase, "Axioms are always
> > true..." In this world, axioms are little more than things that
> > are said to be true because someone says they're true and we
> > sometimes encounter axioms which contradict each other.
>
> Thank you for pointing that out. I didn't intend that sense of the word;
> though, now that you mention it, I can see how that could be assumed.
What
> I did intend was the sense denoting a fundamental, self-evident truth that
> is so obviously true that a counter-proof would be inconceivable.
>
>

I'm going to recall a discussion some months ago, about whether what is stored in the database is "fact" or "opinion". A given assertion could be axiomatic within the contrived world of the database, but easily proven false in the real world.

Illustration:

Teller (looking at screen): According to my database, you're dead. Client (exasperated): But, as you can see, I'm not dead! Teller: I'm sorry, but I won't be able to help you until someone back at headquarters fixes the database.
Client: Is there someone else I can speak to?

Just as a side note, an interesting thing is going to occur back at HQ. After verifying that the database is in error, some DBA is going to go in with a manual update, and alter the state of the database to make it agree with reality.

At some level of abstraction, the transaction log is going to look like a client died, and at a later time rose from the dead. But you and I know that an error was originally recorded in the DB, and later corrected by a transaction. The history of opinion doesn't follow the same trajectory as the history of fact. Received on Sat Aug 05 2006 - 12:48:45 CEST