[Babase] For Jeanne -- AMO and BIL

Karl O. Pinc kop at meme.com
Sun Jul 27 18:21:33 EDT 2008


On 07/17/2008 10:10:50 AM, Susan Alberts wrote:

> Question is, how do we handle it in biograph. Lacey and I thought we  
> would keep two lines, one for AMO and one for BIL, and have BIL's  
> info (birthdate, pid, matgrp, etc) attached to AMOK. Karl doesn't  
> like this for obvious reasons. He suggests instead that we either  
> delete one of these names from the database (presumably BILLY, for  
> whom we have less data) and replace the name everywhere, or we create  
> an "alternate names" table that indicates AMO is probably BIL. We are  
> not totally comfortable with the first option because of the lack of  
> 100% certainty. If you can take a look at the emails that have come  
> through and give us your thoughts, we would appreciate it. At the  
> moment, the only place that all this information about AMO and BIL  
> lives is in our notes attached to the paternity spreadsheet and my  
> head, and this needs to change.

An "alternate names" table does not dictate whether or not there
are 2 rows in BIOGRAPH, one for BIL and one for AMO, or just one.
What it does is provide a "database usable" way of recording what's
in your head.  (Although actually _using_ an alternate names table
in a query would be confusing because you'd get back 2 rows where
you'd ordinarily expect to get one, or no rows at all because
there's no entry in alternate names for "regular" baboons;
presumably anybody who'd write such a query would have
powerful enough database-fu to think through the consequences.)

Karl <kop at meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                  -- Robert A. Heinlein



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