I need to run a report on numbers in a range of numbers.
Each one increments 8 from the last.
For example:
10000

The recent threads on possreps and floating point made me think about fixed
point arithmetic,  again.  I'm going to refer you to the Wikipedia entry on
fixed point arithmetic, as a starting point for our discussion.
There's a comparison in there between floating point,  binary fixed ...

I see people putting XML documents in databases.  Why do they do this,
what is the logic behind it?  Why not just put the data into tables?
Why are the standards committees going along with this (XML  SQL/

Another example of the bidirectional self join is the "borders on"
relationship between two countries.
If France borders on Spain,  it follows that Spain borders on France.  If
Andorra does not border on Luxembourg, it follows that Luxembourg does not

Given a relation R(x,y) when does x->y functional dependency holds?
Let's try several relational algebra expressions over R.
1.  Self join: R /\ R. It evaluates trivially to R. We have to rename
at least one variable to get an interesting expression. Here are 2

Over in a neighboring thread, the prospect of XML inside the DBMS is
recieving a fairly well deserved bashing. Here, I'm gonna point out
one fairly obvious way in which XML in the DBMS makes sense.
We live in a time where information systems create lots of lots of

Here's another example of floating point errors,  that's even simpler than
the 21200 plus 2.5% example.
int i;
float x = 0;

This is more of me trying to sort out my confusion about possreps.
Lately I have been thinking about numeric types. I find the
situation tremendously annoying. On the one hand, one
sorely wants to faithfully model as many of the algebraic

It seems like there are two ways to implement database
replication in a master/slave configuration: replicating
DML or replicating insert/delete tuple streams.
(I will speak of the single table case without considering

I have (another) question about examples in Pascal's "Practical Issues
in Database Management" book. This time it is about modelling disjoint
entity subtypes.
The example given in the book (section 6.2.2 for those who have it) is

Example:  suppose I'm storing responses to a diagnostic interview.  One of
the questions asked of the subject is something like
7.  Have  you always lived in the US?
7a.  If the answer to 7 is "no," how many years have you lived in the US?

I've been reading some of the books recommended to me recently by c.d.t
readers, and have a question regarding the Pascal's "Practical Issues in
DB Management."
My question is: "Have I misunderstood the Pascal definition, or is it

I'm working on a conceptual model (ie 'thinking about' / 'air code')
to implement a small operating system (extensible of course) that is
built completely out of a common set of database functions.
The specific question I have now is an important one - how should I

Assume that I have the following data:
 Product, Category (assume all numerals)
I need to perform the following queries at various times:
1. For a given product, what categories does it belong to (more than 1

Any thought's on using negative numbers as surrogate primary keys?
Working with some folks who are of the opinion that using ranges such
as -1,-2,-3 is appropriate for surrogate keys for code tables.
I'm of the opinion that this is impractical, as, you can't show someone -1