nomenclatorial "bickering"

[Curtis Clark]

At 09:58 AM 9/23/99 -0700, Doug Yanega wrote:
>All of this is more than unfortunate for those of us trying to deal with
>databasing of natural history museums. When one designs a hierarchical
>database, one must follow a single hierarchy.

I'm sure there are good reasons for a hierarchic database in your case. But
for others who may have different constraints, I would point out that a
relational database will allow as many different superspecific (or even
superspecimen) classifications as you have disk space and processor time
for. For keeping track of specimens, the ability to access multiple
classifications is not that important, but for other applications it might
be crucial.


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Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
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