Re: Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys

On May 23, 9:41 am, paul c <toledobythe...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Bob Badour wrote:
paul c wrote:

...
Sure it can, as long as you count things in fifths or tenths. I once
worked with a product that measured distances in 2032nds of an inch so
that a 16th of an inch and a millimeter were each an integer multiple of
the base unit.

I hate to mention international standards when Celko might be lurking
around to take the point off into the wild blue yonder but in this case
I have say that such a system would inevitably be living in an ivory
tower when it was decided by some pretty big bodies years ago that for
purposes of comparison, database data exchange or not, a millimeter
equals 0.03937 inches, period, full stop. So any system that tries to
handle both millimeters and inches without fixed-point decimal hardware
will need to include elaborate, intricate software algorithms to do
elementary arithmetic. To me, this is totally stupid but is perhaps
another example of your point that regression is more present than
progress. The countless hours IEEE has spent on floating-point binary
amazes me, the only explanation I can think of is that humans are more
comfortable studying what they are familiar with not what they aren't,
which seems crazy, it's only the occasional human who has the temerity
to study what he doesn't know.

I haven't read much about the arguments in favour of fixed point
decimal hardware, but it seems problematic to me. For a start it
isn't closed under multiplication or division. E.g. the product of
two numbers that each have n digits after the decimal point may have
up to 2n digits after the decimal point.
.

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