Re: RDBMS design issue

On Tue, 8 Jul 2025 11:28:06 -0700, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
wrote:

On 7/8/2025 10:59 AM, Joe Gwinn wrote:

Isn't this how we relate to people not in our immediate family?
Do you remember your brother's mother-in-law's full name, cold?
Or, do you step through the relationships (in your mind) and
try to drag up "handles" for each of the people you "step along"?

 
Although true, this is not an answer to my question.
 
The Swedish have a useful system:  Mor is Mother and Far is Father.
MorMor is your maternal grandmother and MorFar is your paternal
grandfather, and so on, to any depth.  I don't offhand know of
extensions beyond Mor and Far, but they  may exist.  This pattern
occurs in all Norse languages.

>
What happens when your *original* grandmother divorces her spouse.
He remarries.  What is HIS spouse called?  What is the original
grandmother called?

Not being Swedish, I don't know.  I'd guess  that it follows blood
lines only because originally when XXX had a son YYY, the son's name
was YYY  XXXsson, and so on.  For a daughter YYY could be XXXtochter,
and so on.  Being an evolved pattern, it will be very flexible and
loose on the details.

More importantly (and the purpose of organizing the data the way I have),
how do you FIND these people -- especially when you have to deal with
people other than your immediate family?  How do you find the name of
your neighbor's spouse?  Father?  NayFar??  *Which* "Nay"?
>

There is a childrens' song playing on this.  I encountered it when in
Stockholm in the 1970s, when the children in a nearby park were
singing it in chorus with gusto.
 

It was created as the result of a survey I had done of clients'
needs (for an address book).  I had imagined a much smaller dataset;
how many people do YOU know (and keep track of)?  I have a few hundred.
A client showed me *his* address book with *5000* entries!  (almost
all of which were HIS clients -- not people with whom he interacted
frequently but, rather, people whose contact information he had to
retain:  "Mr Smith called, today.  You should call him back during
business hours"
>
[I.e., you wouldn't store *a* phone number per People as most have
multiple phone numbers; you'd store the set of numbers and how
they relate to that People.]
>
There are lots of details about "People"s that aren't important
(do you care about eye color?  weight?  height?).  But, there is
nothing to prevent you from augmenting an existing set of
relations with, for example, a "Heights" relation that maps
a "People ID" to a specific "height" -- adding the field to
"People" is likely unjustified but a height can still be
associated with those People for whom it is important.

 
Again, all determined by intent, not technology.

>
Technology should mirror how we process and access information.

But be no better?

We don't write names and addresses on scraps of paper and toss
them in a large box -- because that would be a horrid way of
retrieving that information.

Lots of people do just that.  It works so long as their memory holds
up.

I had a co-worker whose office was stuffed with teetering piles of
paper articles and reports. Looked hopeless, but if you asked for
something, he would go to one pile, and pull the requested item from
somewhere deep in the pile.  Never searched, never missed.

To a zeroth order, we put names in alphabetical order.  (by first
name?  last name?  what happens to those folks whose last names
are unknown?  Or, FIRST names (what's the first name of your
priest/rabbi)?

Depends on purpose.  Phone books in Iceland are organized by first
name, profession, last name, because there are too few unique last
names to be useful.

You likely don't know the exact date-of-birth of most of the people
you know.  Yet, if you were told that today was Bob's birthday,
you *might* want to make a note of "July 8" -- even if you don't know
the YEAR.  Or, that Mary's birthday is some time in August.
>
How do you record these data?  More scraps of paper?
>
Each month, I prepare greeting cards for the people I know who
have "significant days" (birthday, anniversary, etc.) in the
coming month.  I may not know a specific date (happened this
month -- but, my card arrived early and I was TOLD "but my
birthday isn't until the 23rd"... now I can add the day-of-month
to the name-of-month I had stored.
>
I may want to recall the date a friend lost her daughter.  With
"scraps of paper", I can make a note of that.  But, nothing
other than my memory will allow me to even know that datum exists!
>
We use technology to leverage our abilities.  "What significant
things are happening THIS month?"
>

When contacting Mr Smith, you'd likely want to know how to address
him ("Hi Bob!" vs. "Hello Mr. Smith").  So, a "Greetings" relation.
>
Do you recall the name of the nice lady at the insurance company
who helped you sort out that billing error?  Do you rely on your
memory?  Or, jot notes, somewhere?  (how do you access those
notes?)

 
By date.

>
So, you remember that some particular thing happened on some
particular date?  WHEN did you have that billing problem?  Was
it this past year?  The year before?  Was it THIS company?
Or, some other?

To be precise, it's the old filing system used by secretaries back in
the day of file cabinets.  For each major entity dealt with there was
a section, within which it was by accession date.  If the entity got
too big, subsections would be created, and so on.  There was always an
uncatorgized section in date order.

Libraries used a similar system, where reports et al were assigned a
number in accession order, and the card file was populated by subject,
author, and field cards.

How best to organize information was worked out long before computers
were invented, and many systems evolved, each for a specific purpose
and field.  Modern computers actually have little to add to that
except speed and capacity.

If you leverage technology to store these "associations" for
you, then you can leverage it to recall them, as well.  E.g.,
"Gee, I've made a point of storing 'Betty' in my address
book with no other information than the fact that she works
for CompanyX -- and, a note about some sort of billing issue
that I may not recall, presently.  But, given that I made a point
of recording her contact information, maybe she's a good place
to start resolving this issue?  Likely at least as good as
cold-calling their 'support' folks and talking to Rajig..."
>

The bottom line is Focus!

Which has not yet happened.  What exactly are you trying to
accomplish?  Don't tell me how - too early in the discussion.

Joe