Re-write

See re-write:

• Data Meaning and Mining: Knowledge Representation and Discovery

Relations & Relationships Part I

See Relations and the Relational Model

This Week

1. Database Truth of the Week

"The RDM is a formal system. It has two parts.

• The Deductive Subsystem: the formal language
• The Interpretation Subsystem i.e., the application--of that language

Without an interpretation subsystem there is no possibility of applying the formal system and it remains an abstract game of symbols.

Semantics is about applying the RDM to some subject. In effect, what you do is restrict the power of the abstract formalism so that it is more closely aligned with your intended use. That means you are using constraints to limit the vocabulary to the subject matter (and making it finite and usually fairly small) and restricting the possible interpretations that can be used consistently with the resulting subset of the formalism." --David McGoveran

Revised 01/25/26

See:

What Meaning Means: Business Rules, Predicates, Constraints, and Semantic Consistency

Redundancy, Consistency, and Integrity: Derivable Data

Database redundancy can wreak havoc with interpretation of analytics results, but it also poses consistency risks that can affect the correctness of the results themselves. The risks are too underappreciated for effective prevention. Given industry practices, analysts who use databases they did not design, or designed without sufficient foundation knowledge, should be on the alert.