Expanding The Scope of Bridge Tables

  • David Korb (3/23/2010)


    I have to vote no on "bridge" since I've seen it used with respect to data migration as well as company merger activities.

    Vote "NO" on "Bridge"! 😉

    Didn't we already vote against the bridge to nowhere in the last election.:-)

    But I agree. This bridge needless abstraction to understanding fundamental relational techniques. Just getting past vendor-specific terminologies is enough of a hurdle. Why add more?

  • David Portas (3/23/2010)


    Ed-997158 (3/23/2010)


    Thanks. I was just going to ask if "bridge table" didn't already have a different terminology

    "Associative Entity" is semantic modelling terminology and not a relational database term. I've never found much use in the idea of singling out tables in this way. As far as I see it, a "bridge" or "associative" table can be any table with more than one foreign key. But why do we need a special name for tables with more than one foreign key?

    Fundamentally there is just one type of relational table (i.e. a table that properly represents a relation). Any such table represents an N-ary relationship between its attributes and "associative" tables are not a special case in any important respect.

    Are you saying that Codd's distinction between P-objects and E-objects can not exist in the relational calculus supported by your ideal relational database? If so I sure do hope I never have to program anything using that calculus!

    Tom

  • Tom.Thomson (4/4/2010)


    I found "The world will come to an end, but music and love will endure" as the translation for your second tag line, but might I request a translation for the first? Is it something about assumptions?

    Cheers,

    Ed

  • Ed-997158 (4/5/2010)


    I found "The world will come to an end, but music and love will endure" as the translation for your second tag line, but might I request a translation for the first? Is it something about assumptions?

    Cheers,

    Ed

    literal: [do] not pick me up without I fall but if fall pick [me] up

    meaning: don't correct me unless I am wrong, but if I am wrong do correct me

    Not really about assumptions, but can certainly be used in the context of making valid or invalid assumptions.

    I suspect the translation you found for the other line was for a slightly different version: the difference is that gaol and ceòl (love and music) are in the opposite order. A quick check using google shows 2440 occurrences of the phrase (in Gaelic, I haven't searched for the English) with "love and music" and only 544 with "music and love", most of which I suspect come from a misquotation in one pop group's lyrics or from a similar misquotation in a learner's post (which may itself have been derived from those lyrics) to the gaidhlig-a discussion list.

    I much prefer "survive" to "endure" - mairidh means roughly "will continue to live" so I think "endure" is a poor translation. But "endure" is much better than the amazing gaffe "be early": we use "nach maireann" (not living) where English uses "late", and a Japanese student who didn't understand what "late" meant in a phrase like "the late Mr Shakespeare" did manage (correctly) to connect mairidh with maireann, with the inevitable unfortunate result.

    Tom

  • Tom.Thomson (4/5/2010)


    Ed-997158 (4/5/2010)


    I found "The world will come to an end, but music and love will endure" as the translation for your second tag line, but might I request a translation for the first? Is it something about assumptions?

    Cheers,

    Ed

    literal: [do] not pick me up without I fall but if fall pick [me] up

    meaning: don't correct me unless I am wrong, but if I am wrong do correct me

    I much prefer "survive" to "endure" - mairidh means roughly "will continue to live" so I think "endure" is a poor translation.

    I think the sense of endure as used the translation is "go on or last forever". For me, that makes the sentiment more powerful than survive. On the other hand, I don't know gaelic at all so I can't attest to how well it reflects the source. Isn't translating fun?

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