Re: Attribute name prefixes, domains, joins, ISO 11179

archon wrote: 
archon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Again, this tells us only that the column exists on the widgets table.
To infer from this that you cannot have a PaintCode without a Widget
would be incorrect. A PaintCode just happens to be an attribute that a
widget can have, and it has two of them. You can certainly have
PaintCodes even if you dont have Widgets, there they are in the Paints
table. In fact, if we were to include "Widget" here, we would have
"WidgetTopHalfPaintCode", which would contradictingly contain two
different class terms ("Widget" and "Paint").


I should have added, here, that this naming convention still has a problem when held against 11179: In the attribute name "TopHalfPaintCode" we have a class term (Paint), a property term (TopHalf), and a representation term (Code), but they are in an incorrect order. As I said above, I believe the class term is correctly "Paint" and not "Widget". The way I decide what the class term is for any attribute X would be to come up with the attribute name without the class term (call this Y), and then ask the question "What kind of Y is X?" So in the widgets table, where X is "the unique identifier for a widget with a number representation" and Y is "Nbr", The question is "What kind of number is Nbr" and the answer is "Widget", so the full name is "WidgetNbr"
But for X = the code representing the paint used on the top half, I can ask 3 different questions and get at least 2 different answers:

Q1: What kind of Code is it? A1 = Paint
Q2: What kind of TopHalf is it? A2 = Widget
Q3: What kind of TopHalfCode is it? A3 = ???

I'm afraid I have no sound logical reason for putting the class term "Paint" in the middle of the attribute name. 

Maybe you could reconsider not being interested in naming domains.
Suppose you'ld have a 'PaintCode' domain instead of the ambiguous 'Code'
(and have a paintcode authority - you /do/ need one).

Q: What kind of PaintCode is it?
A: The PaintCode for the paint used on the Widget_TopHalf.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Attribute name prefixes, domains, joins, ISO 11179
    ... Can't I decide that I am the authority, ... I have not included the word "widget" in the attribute names because that would suggest paint codes are part of the Widget class of things, where they are actually part of the Paint class of things. ... Hence the argument for FKs not getting the class term. ... I'm sure number is a representation term in this example. ...
    (comp.databases.theory)
  • Re: Attribute name prefixes, domains, joins, ISO 11179
    ... A PaintCode just happens to be an attribute that a widget can have, and it has two of them. ... I believe the class term is correctly "Paint" and not "Widget". ...
    (comp.databases.theory)