On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 10:40:15AM +0100, Pailloncy Jean-Gerard wrote:This "extended type" was wonderful, because there was warning/error if "extend type" does not match in any computation: you can not add apple to orange.
I think it's a wonderful idea. You could use a similar mechanism to implement:
- Currencies (so you can't add dollars to pounds) - Timezone aware timestamps (so a time in Australia looks differet from a time in Europe)
Probably much more.
Indeed, you could even add a way to convert between different types if they are in the same categories; for example convert between dollars and euro's or between degrees Celsius and degrees Fahrenheit (that's a trickier one, the shell command 'units' returns wrong results there).
Of course, it's still not possible to add dollars and degrees Fahrenheit... (hence the category concept I mentioned)
You could even determine that if you divide a quantity in meters by a quantity in seconds that you're talking about a speed... I think there are quite a few people on this planet who would be happy about that.
OTOH, it's probably not that a good idea to add all kinds of complicated (read: "processor intensive") math to a database engine.
Just my 0.02 Euro.
-- Regards,
Alban Hertroys MAG Productions
P: +31(0)53 4346874 F: +31(0)53 4346876 E: alban@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx W: http://www.magproductions.nl
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