John Salerno wrote: > John Machin wrote: > > John Salerno wrote: > >> CREATE TABLE Researchers ( > >> researcherID varchar(9) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, > >> birthYear int(4) DEFAULT NULL, > >> birthMonth int(2) DEFAULT NULL, > >> birthDay int(2) DEFAULT NULL, > >> birthCountry varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL, > >> birthState char(2) DEFAULT NULL, > >> birthCity varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL, > >> nameFirst varchar(50) NOT NULL, > >> nameLast varchar(50) NOT NULL, > >> nameGiven varchar(255) DEFAULT NULL, > > > > A bit OT, but one answer to the "can you make a living with just > > Python" question is "Yup, tool of choice for rummaging in and fixing > > data that's been mangled by users cramming it into dodgy data models" > > :-) > > [snip] > > > (2) It's not apparent how you would use the first, last, and given > > names columns, especially with two of them being "not null". Consider > > how you would store e.g.: > > J Edgar Hoover > > DJ Delorie > > Sukarno > > 35 > > Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk > > Molnar Janos > > Fatimah binte Rahman > > Zhang Manyu > > Not sure I follow you on some of these examples. In the case of J Edgar > Hoover, I would just put the full name for his first name, or if "J" is > entered, then just that, I suppose. Given name will be first name + > middle name(s). (I took most of this schema from a baseball database, so > maybe it's just something that worked better there.)
You sure to be using "last name" to mean "surname" in the sense of unchanging family name e.g. John and Mary Smith are the children of Fred Smith, who is the son of Joe Smith. You would address a letter to Mary as "Dear Ms Smith", and in follow-on paragraphs in (say) a news article might refer to her using only the surname e.g. "Smith also announced ...". The problems are (1) there are cultures that don't have the concept of a surname, and if they do, it may not be the "last name" (2) the name may consist of only one word (giving you problems with "not null") or not even be a word. DJ Delorie -- his "given name" *is* DJ Sukarno -- one word name 35 -- some jurisdictions allow name to include (or consist solely of) digits Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk -- surname is Cheung [Hong Kong romanisation] Molnar Janos -- surname is Molnar Fatimah binte Rahman -- no surname; daughter of person whose given name is Rahman Zhang Manyu -- surname is Zhang [pinyin romanisation]; same person as Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk It gets better: Iceland: Jon Bjornsson and Hildur Bjornsdottir are the children of Bjorn Eiriksson. Portuguese: Jose Carlos Fernandes [mothers's family name] Rodrigues [fathers's family name]; first step in shortening gives Jose Carlos Rodrigues -- no drama here, but compare with Spanish: Jose Carlos Fernandez [father's family name] Rodriguez [mother's family name], shortened to Jose Carlos Fernandez. [parts of] Somalia, Ethiopia: [using English given-name words for clarity] Tom Dick Harry and Janet Dick Harry are the children of Dick Harry Fred, who is the son of Harry Fred Joe. Vietnamese: Full name e.g. Nguyen Thi Hoa Dung -- I have seen this recorded as last name = Nguyen (that's the family name; doing well so far), but first name = Thi. Thi means "Ms" or "female". The "first name" is actually Dung. Given the popularity of Nguyen as a family name (about 50% !!) , the recorded information has narrowed the choice to about 25% of the Vietnamese population :-( Cheers, John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
