Re: The Q model

* Peter F. Patel-Schneider
| 
| Oh, so you are doing something similar to porting propositional
| semantics to predicate calculus statements that don't mention
| quantification or use variables.  OK, but so what?  You could do
| this for any injection of any syntax into any other syntax.

True, but these two particular syntaxes are important. (I think so, at
least.)
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
|  (1) It's useful for implementations, for conversion, and for general
|      understanding of the relationship between the two models.
 
* Peter F. Patel-Schneider
|
| But without some sort of semantic relationship, what good is it?
| For example, I might combine the relational and OO DB models by
| mapping them into disjoint subsets of some larger syntax, perhaps
| tuples with OIDs added, where relational tuples map into big tuples
| with empty OIDs and OO information uses big tuples with non-empty
| OIDs.  But what does this get me?  The two input formalisms don't
| interact at all.

Well, in this case the subsets are not disjoint. They are not equal,
but they are certainly not disjoint, and to me that is the value of
this model.
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
|  (2) It's useful because it makes it possible to find out if a
|      reasonable combined semantics is possible.
 
* Peter F. Patel-Schneider
|
| But then the proof of the pudding *is* the semantics.

Yes, but now we are at least one step closer.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >

Received on Friday, 5 August 2005 14:09:03 UTC