The ORM Foundation

Hi Marc,   Thanks for the clarifications. As it happens, the particular, nitpicky modeling issue our current discussion swings on, is whether, in my model, the exclusion constraint holds. That is, is it possible for, say, a Claimant to work both for a Public Organization, and for a Federal Agency?   There are other ...

Hi Ken, You responded to my first critique -- wherein I said that since a Claimant couldn't work both for a Federal Agency and for a Public Organization, your ternary was non-elementary (and needs splitting). Your  response was, mainly, that "If you look closely at my diagram, you will see that I have specified three ...

Hi Ken, Perhaps I can do as good a job re-phrasing my statement, as you've done re-phrasing yours. I will try, in any case. But maybe what i need is to unpack, rather than condense... Anyway, my point was this:   If you, or anyone else, should happen to put forward the principle that "An object-role model ...

Well said! Thanks, Mr. Darwen!

Hi Ken, Well, I'm not enough of a Star Wars buff to know what you mean by "Yoda language". But perhaps the following is another example... You wrote: "Well, I did not infer that from Marc's description but you may be right on this point.However, my purpose was not to present an accurate model of Marc's domain (I agree ...

Hi Ken, If it matters, I still think Clifford's terminology is less problematic: First, "purist" does not necessarily carry any negative connotation. I doubt that Mr. Date would object to the characterisation of himself as a relational purist; in fact, I think he'd happily agree with the characterisation.    ...

Hi Ken You write that "My purpose was to illustrate the principle of how Marc's domain could be modeled in a way that does not require the use of nulls at the conceptual level." Ah... that's certainly different than how you characterized your purpose before.    But given your new characterization of your purpose, ...

Hi Ken, So, let me ask you a question about that object type you call "Organization(.type)". Did you mean it to represent a set of (possible) organization types (e.g. {'Federal','Public','NotListed'} )? If so, the name of the object type should be "OrganizationType", not "Organization" (and ...

Ken, P.S. So I don't appear too biased for some people's tastes, I offer up an additional link, which at least gives both sides equal time -- in the persons of Messers Date and Codd: http://www.dbdebunk.com/page/page/1706814.htm

Hi Ken, You complained about Clifford's use of the term "relational purist", and preferred us to use the term "relational conformist". I demur. I think Clifford's term is somewhat more accurate.    The reason I say this is that I cannot get my head around the idea that E.F. Codd was not a "relational ...