Re: RDBMS design issue

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?

*You* have to be able to access YOUR data.  How do you tell an
agent what data you are looking for?  We (as humans) tend to
encode meaning in the relationships that we have to the data.
If you want your secretary (or any other agent) to place a call
to a particular someone, MUST you have that person's full (and
unique!) name in order for her to carry out your wish?  If
you said "Get me Bob at Acme Metals", would she have to look through
your Rolodex for all Bob's?  Or, all Acme Metals entries?
Would she know -- once she got him on the line -- to remind
you to congratulate him on his recent 25th wedding anniversary?
And, inquire as to what they did to celebrate it?  Or, to
prompt you that his kids names are Alpha, Beta and Gamma -- and
that Beta is likely just graduating from college "about now"?
If you had a perfect (unerring and unaging) memory, you would
recall these DATA on your own and use them as you deemed
appropriate.
Yvonne called, a few days ago.  Before I picked up the phone,
I knew it was her and that her birthday was in the upcoming week.
So, instead of "Hello", I answered "Bon anniversaire!" pleasing
her by *remembering* her birthday AND greeting her in her
native tongue.

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.

But memories DON'T hold up.  So, people lose information -- or access to
it -- particularly as they age and the amount of information increases.

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.

I hadn't lived "at home" in some 30 years.  On one visit, I
noticed the garage door wasn't working.  Bringing up the subject as
I walked in the door, my father ranted about "your mother" having
misplaced the paperwork for the door so he didn't know what part
to order.
I walked to the refrigerator and reached into the cabinets *above*
(no way my mother could reach them!) and pulled out the paperwork.
Thus, aborting that "rant".  Neither of them -- living in the
house -- could remember that the paperwork was there (I have no
idea WHY it ended up there!) yet I was able to recall it in a
heartbeat.
Now, ask me where I left my tape rule...

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 would likely STILL have your own "address book" containing the
names and other information of those persons important to you.
My mother kept the phone numbers of the neighbors on a slip of
paper tacked to a corkboard by the phone.  She used them often
enough that she didn't want to even bother looking in the
abbreviated phone book she kept.
"Muriel and Gene" would mean nothing to anyone else reading it.
And "Doctor" was NOT our doctor!

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.

And people manually trudging through it WITH KNOWLEDGE OF THAT ENCODING
PROCESS.

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.

People -- individuals -- don't lump their interactions in "large paper files
organized by date".  Because that's not how they THINK of that information.
List all of the neighbors by date they moved into the neighborhood?
List friends by age?

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.

I am trying to impart *meaning* to "data" such that an agent
can use the same sort of reasoning that *I* would to access
that data.
If "James" phones, announcing his NAME would tell me nothing;
his last name differs from that of his mother.  Annotating
his name with "Diana's son" makes the information useful to me.
If *you* answered the phone, for me -- and had access to the
names of all of my contacts -- what value could you add in
announcing the caller to me?  "Who the f*ck is James?"
But, an agent with access to the data AND THE RELATIONSHIPS
BETWEEN THEM can extract additional information to add value.