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Re: Does data represent things besides entities, attributes, a

• From: Mukul Gandhi <gandhi.mukul@gmail.com>
• To: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:17:06 +0530

Hi Roger,

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 7:32 PM, Costello, Roger L.<costello@mitre.org> wrote:
> For example, here's a description of a book:
>
>    In this groundbreaking book, evolutionary
>    biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles
>    racially biased theories of human history by
>    revealing the environmental factors actually
>    responsible for history's broadcast patterns.
>
> It is data.

I too think, this is data.

> It doesn't seem to be a representation of either an entity, attribute, or relationship.

I think, the term "data" refers to any piece of information that can
be feeded as an input to a computational process (not literally, as
the above Unicode string (the paragraph you wrote). But after
assigning parts of data to suitable forms, like entities, attributes,
and relationships in data structures which are understood by
programming languages). So, I would agree with Mike, that "Data
represents entities, attributes, and relationships".

The above paragraph you cited, describes a particular scenario in a
descriptive English. This description (a kind of problem domain) may
be analyzed for what all are entities, attributes, or relationships.

For example, by analyzing the above paragraph you cited, I would say
following are the relevant entities, attributes, and relationships:

Entities: book, person (Jared Diamond -> who is an instance of person)
Attributes: attributes of book (like name, author, isbn etc), and so on
Relationships: for e.g Jared Diamond writes a book

> Does data represent things besides entities, attributes, and relationships?

For a given problem domain, I think data represents only "entities,
attributes, or relationships".


-- 
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi

• References:
  • Does data represent things besides entities, attributes, andrelationships?
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>