> Hehe, and google autosuggested this place for me. I suppose google
> feels I've got alot in common with porn spam,
>> Hehe, and google autosuggested this place for me. I suppose google
>> feels I've got alot in common with porn spam,
>
> That's only a recent thing, but I am sad to say it seems to have dried
> up the on-topic conversations.
Alright, here's an old topic, the trans-relational model. (At one time,
I was intrigued by it, since I don't live in the USA and therefore could
ignore US patents if I wanted to try to make money off it.) One claim
for it was that certain run-time sorts or index builds could be
eliminated, although I seem to remember one of the big names cautioning
that there might always be a 'preferred order' (sorry if I've mis-quoted
and I don't mean to be sly, the people who publicized it remain deep
thinkers in my book). After some study, undoubtedly inferior in parts,
I concluded that one could accomplish the same 'physical' effect if
every 'column' were indexed.
However, in certain cases, it seemed to me that even if Codd was
approving of it (or so I remember reading), it denied his goal of
'symmetric exploitation', reason being that it depended on projections
of columns that were 'adjacent' (my term) in the 'zig-zag' organization
of physical columns, eg., if the zigzag connected column a to b and b to
c but the query involved only columns a and c, then the result wouldn't
have what I think of as a 'pleasing' order, unless a sort were invoked.
I realize that a pleasing order is counter to relational dogma but when
it comes to the mundane domains such as dollars and dates that I've been
indoctrinated in all my life, I find ordering of those familiar domains
to be just as powerful, helpful and convenient as pretty much any logic
I'm aware of. As far as I can tell, Codd's symmetric exploitation could
be achieved if every permutation of 'columns' were encoded in the
trans-relational intermediate layer.
I don't remember this aspect of that model ever being discussed here but
I contend it is just as reasonable as Codd's original intent, which was
in part to make access to data storage more intuitive.
Of course, I'd agree if Bob B said he was finding plonk maintenance
onerous these days, but I have my own kind of plonk to fall back on. If
it wasn't already my practice, I'd have said the current state of cdt
was driving me to drink.
Bob Badour - 11 May 2008 03:47 GMT
>>> Hehe, and google autosuggested this place for me. I suppose google
>>> feels I've got alot in common with porn spam,
[quoted text clipped - 37 lines]
> it wasn't already my practice, I'd have said the current state of cdt
> was driving me to drink.
Quite the contrary. There is no point in plonking a very temporary spam
account, and the spam seems to have driven off even the would-be trolls
and cranks.
paul c - 12 May 2008 01:53 GMT
...
> Quite the contrary. There is no point in plonking a very temporary spam
> account, and the spam seems to have driven off even the would-be trolls
> and cranks.
Mystics too, I'd say! Living in a place where few cashiers can make
change without a computer, I don't think it's far-fetched to conclude
that the tedium of waiting line-ups for computerized bureaucracy to
grind its wheels causes some of us to confuse anything computerized with
reality.
Jonathan Leffler - 11 May 2008 05:12 GMT
> Alright, here's an old topic, the trans-relational model. (At one time,
> I was intrigued by it, since I don't live in the USA and therefore could
[quoted text clipped - 26 lines]
> I contend it is just as reasonable as Codd's original intent, which was
> in part to make access to data storage more intuitive.
I wonder if part of the issue is the name? As I understand it, the TRM
is a storage level device, operating as a suitable substrata for a fully
relational DBMS to use - but not itself constrained by all the rules of
the RM. For example, it unabashedly has columns in a defined order, not
in an undefined order.
So, it is a possible physical level representation of data that the RM
handles at the logical level with the rules of the RM running the show
at the logical level.
When were the patents on the Trans-Relational Model issued, does anyone
remember? I wonder how much longer before they expire - I expect it is
a decade away before those in the USA can use them unfettered, but it
might be a bit less.
I'm also not clear whether Codd ever really discussed or got involved
with it. C J Date included an appendix in his 8th Edn, and apparently
wrote a book on it but that got stranded when the company ran out of
money and the VCs and founders no longer saw eye-to-eye, or thereabouts.
OK - maybe my new subject for the thread is as misleading as the old.
It is still "Trans-Relational Model Moribundus", but the topic of
discussing it has been revivified.

Signature
Jonathan Leffler #include <disclaimer.h>
Email: jleffler@earthlink.net, jleffler@us.ibm.com
Guardian of DBD::Informix v2008.0229 -- http://dbi.perl.org/
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353E31855AB51444CFF02EB1556B0C7A6873465080A95CF9B1C49B72A4FF0FF4
paul c - 11 May 2008 16:30 GMT
...
>> I don't remember this aspect of that model ever being discussed here
>> but I contend it is just as reasonable as Codd's original intent,
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> in an undefined order.
> ...
I think you are right about that, maybe my long-windedness made it look
otherwise. As I read the descriptions of trm and parts of the patents
it looked to me that sometimes it doesn't define the order of columns
and sometimes it does. As a user that would annoy me. I would want the
order of result columns to be consistent.
> So, it is a possible physical level representation of data that the RM
> handles at the logical level with the rules of the RM running the show
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> is still "Trans-Relational Model Moribundus", but the topic of
> discussing it has been revivified.
Cimode - 15 May 2008 00:44 GMT
Hi paul,
[Snipped]
> I concluded that one could accomplish the same 'physical' effect if
> every 'column' were indexed.
Yes.
> However, in certain cases, it seemed to me that even if Codd was
> approving of it (or so I remember reading), it denied his goal of
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> c but the query involved only columns a and c, then the result wouldn't
> have what I think of as a 'pleasing' order, unless a sort were invoked.
Tarin failed to deal with solving the mathematical counterpart of zig
zags. He failed to minimize mathematically the number of operations
necessary to reconstitute the tuple. He thought that separating the
layers should de facto be *sufficient* but he failed to see that it
was just *necessary*. I have proved mathematically that a storing
system that imposes *any* kind of ordering to represent a binary
relation necessarily has an equally increasing of operations to
reconstitute tuples as more un-ary domains intersect with domain
defined by the set of all tuples. That fundamental problem defeats in
fact the entire purpose of data independence.
Based on the study of Tarin's work and then mistakes, I have expanded
to try to avoid transrelational model shortcomings by designing a
radically different appoach to how relation can be reconstituted at
run time.
> I realize that a pleasing order is counter to relational dogma but when
> it comes to the mundane domains such as dollars and dates that I've been
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> be achieved if every permutation of 'columns' were encoded in the
> trans-relational intermediate layer.
Permutation are logical operations that are in fact not efficient as
far as number of operations involved to reconstitute relation domain
elements. Among other things, symmetric exploitation is impossible
when any binary relation is encoded as is on the physical disk.
I have created a method that we can name relation reduction that
allows to minimize operations at elementary level. The method is
based on the study of the relationship between the cardinality of each
attribute domain element and relation domain tuple. I also designed a
subsequent new physical encoding scheme far more efficient than any
encoding scheme involving a direct encoding. I do not want to
discredit Tarin's work because it is probable that I would have never
thought about that without studying TRM and seeing where it fails but
I can say with certainty that TRM is *still* a direct image system.
The relation reduction does not put in fact put *any* ordering as a
prerequisite onto encoding information onto the physical layer which
brings it in coherence with the logical layer while keeping both
layers separate. The consequences are numerous and express true data
independence:
The larger is the tuple set the more efficient the encoding. I can
actually see sometime file sizes *decrease* when the number of tuples
to be represented increases: the more logical information is encoded
the smaller the physical counterpart of that information. I believe
this is true data independence.
I must give a strong credit to Tarin's work as it was innovative
enough to trigger new questions which led me here.
[Snipped]