NULL - the insanity bit.
mu: The absence of an answer to a question which requires an answer.
If you want to go into this, first search for NULL NIL undef mu void.
In databases traditionally NULL is used and and opposed.

C. J. Date has written about what he calls "The First Great Blunder" related
to this question:  What concept is it in the relational world that is the
counterpart to the concept of object class in the object world?
He suggests that there are two answers given: domain = object class ...

I was just at the dentist office and saw again those rows of color-coded
paper files.  I wondered what "best practices" or even possibly "theory"
might be used these days to design such a system.
I know I have used data normalization techniques when designing paper-based

As part of an assignment i've been asked to:
Explain in a few paragraphs why dependency theory provides important
under-pinning for practical database design.
The lecturer has given very few sparce notes!

In an effort to play by the rules of the game, I'd like to get a handle on
the purpose of this forum.
For starters, what are some currently valid database theories about which we
can hold discussions in this forum?  How many of them are there and what are

I have an assignment to survey XML database technologies in about
three weeks. I've looked closely at eXcite, reviewed XQuery and XPath
(and others) at w3.org, and essentially have tried to all the due
diligence I can.

Does anyone else find themselves somewhat uncomfortable that, in the context
of relational databases, we say such as "Join" and "Project", but we also say
such as "Intersection" and "Union"? Why not "Junction" and "Projection" or
"Intersect" and "Unite"?

Nested sets are just great and i've been using it for quite a while
already.
The only inconvenience that popped up lately was that it seems like
it's impossible to order node siblings by some arbitrary parameter,

Mazes, trees, and forests.
Say we have a populated database. For the ease of
discussion let's assume it is a relational database.
Definition of "biggest": The biggest relation is

It's been claimed in this forum that there's no empirical data to compare
TCO between Oracle and PICK.
Oracle has a larger market share than PICK.  That's empirical evidence.
I would never claim that it's conclusive evidence.  But it is evidence.  And

In trying to get a better handle on relational database design compared to
XML or PICK database design, I'm writing up the example below and got stuck
on just how a relational theorist would likely design this.  Below is the
design for a non-1NF implementation.  I'll use my ...

Here is another start.
If it is appreciated, I'll post the glossary once in a while.
---------------                        "Some appetizer quote"  - N.N.
Glossary 0.0.1:

Imagine a database that is only accessed by a server application. This
application provides the ability for admin users to create templates
for forms. When a template is created, other users of the application
can then submit instances of a form, which is then stored in the

In another topic, the question got raised whether source code is metadata.
There is a way in which source code might be considered "metaprocess".  It
tells the compiler what to do,  in order that the compiler will tell the
target machine what to do.

Which words should be in it?
Short posts for now, please.