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15 Aug 2000
Lemons, Lemmings,
and Red Herrings
©
© 2000 Applied
Information
Science
A
view of information generally characterized by the following:
-
Read only - i.e., with no capability to change the information presented by create, assign, or destroy;
-
Unlimited in scope of instances (unlike "transactions" which are generally very limited in scope);
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Viewed as a single denormalized table widened by the columns of many parents and children folded into one.
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Decoded onto crushed trees which are immediately recycled into cardboard cartons.
These characteristics do not make a "report" fundamentally different from any other (e.g., "transactional") view of information. Each characteristic may appear alone or in combination with the others.
In our thinking, there is no such thing as a report. There are many sorts of views of information, each with its own mix of characteristics.