Something keeps showing up in my programming, and it is that two things are the same from some viewpoint, but different from another. Like, imagine you build a graph of rail stations, connected by trains, then the classes Vertex and RailStation are sometimes the same, other times not.
So, imagine I have a graph that very much represents rail stations and trains. Then I hand this graph to another object, which deletes some vertices, and then I want the corresponding rail stations to be gone.
I don't want to make rail stations "properties" of vertices, they're not. Also, the problem is symmetrical: If I erase a railstation, I want the corresponding vertex to be gone. What is the proper OO way to model or correspondences. I'm willing to go a few extra miles by writing some support methods or classes, if in the end the overall usage is simple and easy.
I'm currently using the Smalltalk programming language, but the question isn't really smalltalk-specific, I think. I just mention it because in Smalltalk, you can do cool tricks like examining the call stack, which might be helpful in this context.
Update:
Well, RailStations aren't Vertices! Are they?
Ok, let us consider real code, as demanded in the answers. Let me model a person with children. That's the easiest thing, right? Children should also know their parents, so we have like a doubly linked tree. To make disbanding parents from children easier, I model the link between parent and child as a Relationship, with properties parent and child.
So, I could implement parent>>removeChild: perhaps like this
removeChild: aChild
(parent relationshipWith: aChild) disband.
So, a parent has a collection of relationships, not of children. But each relationship corresponds to a child. Now I want to do things like this:
parent children removeAllSuchThat: [:e | e age < 12]
which should remove the relationship and the child.
Here, relationships and children correspond in some sense. So, what do I do now? Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that I could solve the problem without introducing Relationship classes. But indeed, parents and children actually do share a relationship, so why not model that and use it to help disbanding double links less imperatively?
In your problem domain, aren't stations a kind of vertex? In which case, why not derive Station from Vertex?
Notice the use of the phrase "in your problem domain". Your problem appears to be about the use as railway stations appearing in a graph. So yes, in that domain, stations are vertexes. If it was a different problem domain, say a database on railway station architecture, they may well not be. Most modern languages support some idea of namespaces to allow you to have different kinds of entity with the same names in different domains.
Regarding your parent/child problem, once again you are being too general. If I were modelling mathematical expressions and sub expressions, if I remove a parent I would want to remove and delete/free all subexpressions. OTOH, ff I were modelling legal responsibility relationships in the UK population, then when a responsibility isis dissolved (say because of a divorce), I only want to remove the relationship, and NOT delete/free the child, which has its own independent existence.
It seems like you just want RailStation to inherit from Vertex (is-a relationship). See this smalltalk tutorial on inheritance. That way, if you have a graph of RailStations, an object used to dealing (generically) with graphs of Vertexes would handle things right naturally.
If this approach won't work, be more specific (preferably with real code).
From your description of the problem, you have a one-to-one correspondence of stations to vertices and deleting a station should automatically delete the corresponding vertex (and vice-versa). You also mentioned building "a graph of rail stations, connected by trains", by which you apparently mean a graph in which stations are vertices and trains are edges.
So, in what way is a station not a vertex? If the station does not exist except as a vertex, and if a vertex does not exist except as a station, then what benefit do you see in maintaining them as two distinct-but-linked entities?
As I understand your situation, station-isa-vertex and inheritance is the way to model that.
Having a Relationship object is a good idea.
I think the appropriate question here is "which use should be made of it?".
Probably Parent and Child classes are extending the same Person superclass, so they'll have some attributes in common, age for example.
In my idea, I can see the following: Parent and Child objects have to know each other, so both classes have to keep a link to the same Relationship.
The Relationship object keeps a one-to-many relation between a single parent and a certain number of children, and it'll keep a reference to each Person object.
This way you can implement the whole disbanding logic within the Relationshp object, more or less sophisticated as you wish. You can query the Relationship object to know which members of the family match your requirements to do something. You can make the relationship to disband (and destroy) safely, as it will know all members and would ask them to break the reference and then it would be ready to destroy, or ask to some member to leave the family, keeping the Relationship object alive.
But that's not all. Relationship should be really a superclass, extended by HierarchicalRelationship and PeerRelationship (or FriendRelationship).
This specialization lets you have Parent(s) and Child(ren) to link between other hierarchies in a completely traversal way.
The true concept behind this is that your Relationship objects are the key to query and organize the whole bunch of Person objects (or Vertex objects) in a scalable and structured way, so the whole data domain you end up with is usable in any sense you like, whether you want to disband groups or walk a certain path (or railroad) between them.
Sorry for the huge amount of metaphores.
Take a look at Fame, see http://www.squeaksource.com/Fame.html
We use a specialized subclass of Collection that updates the opposite end when you add or remove elements. Also, you can annotate your classes with pragmas to annotate relations. These pragmas are used by the Fame framework to do all kind of nice stuff.
Related
I am just learning how to implement the Nested Set Model but still have confusion with a certain aspect of it involving items that may be part of multiple categories. Given the example below that was pulled from HERE and mirrors many other examples I have come across...
How do you avoid duplication in the DB when you add Apples since they are multi-colored (i.e. Red, Yellow, Green)?
You do not avoid duplications and the apple (or a reference to the apple) will be placed twice in your tree otherwise it won't be a tree but rather a graph. Your question is equally applicable if you build a... Swing JTree or an HTML tree ;).
The nested set model is just an efficient way to push and traverse a tree structure in a relational DB.It is not a data structure itself. It's more popular among MySQL users since MySQL lacks functionality for processing tree structures (e.g. like the one that Oracle provides).
Cheers!
Nested set model is a structure for 1:N (one-to-many) relationships, you want to use M:N (many to many) relationship (many items can have apple as parent, but can have more than one parent).
See this article
Wikipedia
But you should be aware, that hierarchical M:N relationships can get quite complex really fast!
Thinking out loud here, but perhaps it would be helpful to view some attributes (like Red, Yellow and Green) as 'tags' instead of 'categories' and handle them with separate logic. That would let you keep the Nested Set model and avoid unnecessary duplication. Plus, it would allow you to keep your categories simpler.
It's all in how you think about the information. Categories are just another way of representing attributes. I understand your example was just for illustrative purposes, but if you're going to categorize fruit by color, why would you not also categorize meat the same way, i.e., white meat and red meat? Most likely you would not. So my point is it's probably not necessary to categorize fruit by color, either.
Instead, some attributes are better represented in other ways. In fact, in its simplest form, it could be recorded as a column in the 'food' table labeled 'color'. Or, if it's a very common attribute and you find yourself duplicating the value significantly, it could be split off to a separate table named 'color' and mapped to each food item from a third table. Of course, the more abstract approach would be to generalize the table as 'tags' and include each color as an individual tag that can then be mapped to any food item. Then you can map any number of tags (colors) to any number of food items, giving you a true many-to-many relationship and freeing up your category designations to be more generalized as well.
I know there's ongoing debate about whether tags are categories or categories are tags, etc., but this appears to be one instance in which they could be complimentary and create a more abstract and robust system that's easier to manage.
Old thread, but I found a better answer to this problem.
Since apple can have different color, your structure is a graph,not a tree. The nested set model is not the right structure for that.
Since you mention in a comment that you're using Mysql, a better solution is to use the Open Query Graph engine (http://openquery.com/graph/doc) which is a mysql plugin that lets you create a special table where you put the relationships, basically parentId and childId.
The magic is that you query this table with a special column latch depending of the value passed in the query will tell the OQGRAPH engine which command to execute. See the docs for details.
This design problem is turning out to be a bit more "interesting" than I'd expected....
For context, I'll be implementing whatever solution I derive in Access 2007 (not much choice--customer requirement. I might be able to talk them into a different back end, but the front end has to be Access (and therefore VBA & Access SQL)). The two major activities that I anticipate around these tables are batch importing new structures from flat files and reporting on the structures (with full recursion of the entire structure). Virtually no deletes or updates (aside from entire trees getting marked as inactive when a new version is created).
I'm dealing with two main tables, and wondering if I really have a handle on how to relate them: Products and Parts (there are some others, but they're quite straightforward by comparison).
Products are made up of Parts. A Part can be used in more than one Product, and most Products employ more than one Part. I think that a normal many-to-many resolution table can satisfy this requirement (mostly--I'll revisit this in a minute). I'll call this Product-Part.
The "fun" part is that many Parts are also made up of Parts. Once again, a given Part may be used in more than one parent Part (even within a single Product). Not only that, I think that I have to treat the number of recursion levels as effectively arbitrary.
I can capture the relations with a m-to-m resolution from Parts back to Parts, relating each non-root Part to its immediate parent part, but I have the sneaking suspicion that I may be setting myself up for grief if I stop there. I'll call this Part-Part. Several questions occur to me:
Am I borrowing trouble by wondering about this? In other words, should I just implement the two resolution tables as outlined above, and stop worrying?
Should I also create Part-Part rows for all the ancestors of each non-root Part, with an extra column in the table to store the number of generations?
Should Product-Part contain rows for every Part in the Product, or just the root Parts? If it's all Parts, would a generation indicator be useful?
I have (just today, from the Related Questions), taken a look at the Nested Set design approach. It looks like it could simplify some of the requirements (particularly on the reporting side), but thinking about generating the tree during the import of hundreds (occasionally thousands) of Parts in a Product import is giving me nightmares before I even get to sleep. Am I better off biting that bullet and going forward this way?
In addition to the specific questions above, I'd appreciate any other comentary on the structural design, as well as hints on how to process this, either inbound or outbound (though I'm afraid I can't entertain suggestions of changing the language/DBMS environment).
Bills of materials and exploded parts lists are always so much fun. I would implement Parts as your main table, with a Boolean field to say a part is "sellable". This removes the first-level recursion difference and the redundancy of Parts that are themselves Products. Then, implement Products as a view of Parts that are sellable.
You're on the right track with the PartPart cross-ref table. Implement a constraint on that table that says the parent Part and the child Part cannot be the same Part ID, to save yourself some headaches with infinite recursion.
Generational differences between BOMs can be maintained by creating a new Part at the level of the actual change, and in any higher levels in which the change must be accomodated (if you want to say that this new Part, as part of its parent hierarchy, results in a new Product). Then update the reference tree of any Part levels that weren't revised in this generational change (to maintain Parts and Products that should not change generationally if a child does). To avoid orphans (unreferenced Parts records that are unreachable from the top level), Parts can reference their predecessor directly, creating a linked list of ancestors.
This is a very complex web, to be sure; persisting tree-like structures of similarly-represented objects usually are. But, if you're smart about implementing constraints to enforce referential integrity and avoid infinite recursion, I think it'll be manageable.
I would have one part table for atomic parts, then a superpart table with a superpartID and its related subparts. Then you can have a product/superpart table.
If a part is also a superpart, then you just have one row for the superpartID with the same partID.
Maybe 'component' is a better term than superpart. Components could be reused in larger components, for example.
You can find sample Bill of Materials database schemas at
http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/
The website offers Access applications for some of the models. Check with the author of the website.
I have a GUI tool that manages state sequences. One component is a class that contains a set of states, your typical DFA state machine. For now, I'll call this a StateSet (I have a more specific name in mind for the actual class that makes sense, but this name I think will suffice for the purpose of this question.)
However, I have another class that has a collection (possibly partially unordered) of those state sets, and lists them in a particular order. and I'm trying to come up with a good name for it - not just for internal code, but for customers to refer to it.
The role of this particular second collection is to encapsulate the entire currently used/available collection of StateSets that the user has created. All of the StateSets will be used eventually in the application. A good analogy would be a hand of cards versus the entire table: The 'table' contains all of the currently available hands, while the 'hand' contains a particular collection of cards.
I've got these as starter ideas I could throw out for the class name; I'm not comfortable with either at the moment:
Sequence (maybe...with something else tacked on to the name)
StateSetSet (reasonable for code, but not for customers)
And as ewernli mentions, these are really technical terms, which don't really convey a the idea well. Any other suggestions or ideas?
Sequence - Definitely NOT. It's too generic, and doesn't have any real semantic meaning.
StateSetSet - While more semantically correct, this is confusing. You have a sequence, which implies order, which is different from a set, which does not.
That being said, the best option, IMO, is StateSetSequence, as it implies you have a sequence of StateSet instances.
What is the role/function of you StateSetSet?
StateSetSet or Sequence are technical terms.
Prefer a term that convey the role/function of the class.
That could well be something like History, Timeline, WorldSnapshot,...
EDIT
According to your updated description, StateSet looks to me like StateSpace (the space of all possible states). If the user can then interactively create something, it might be appropriate to speak of a Workspace. If the user creates various state spaces of interest, I would then go for StateSpaceWorkspace. Isn't that a cool name :)
"StateSets" may be sufficient.
Others:
StateSetList
StateSetLister
StateSetListing
StateSetSequencer
I like StateSetArrangement, implying an ordering without implying anything about the underlying storage mechanisms.
How do you know when to create a new table for very similar object types?
Example:
To learn mysql I'm building a model solar system. For the purposes of my project, planets have many similar attributes to dwarf planets, centaurs, and comets. Dwarf planets are almost completely identical to planets. Centaurs and comets are only different from planets because their orbital path has more variation. Should I have a separate table for each type of object, or should they share tables?
The example is probably too simple, but I'm also interested in best practices. Like should I use separate tables just in case I want to make planets and dwarf planets different in the future, or are their any efficiency reasons for keeping them in the same table.
Normal forms is what you should be interested with. They pretty much are the convention for building tables.
Any design that doesn't break the first, second or third normal form is fine by me. That's a pretty long list of requirement though, so I suggest you go read it off the Wikipedia links above.
It depends on what type of information you want to store about the objects. If the information for all of them is the same, say orbit radius, mass and name, then you can use the same table. However, if there are different properties for each (say atmosphere composition for planets, etc.) then you can either use separate tables for each (not very normalized) or have one table for basic properties like orbit, mass and name and a second table for just the properties that are unique to planets (and a similar table for comets, etc. if needed). All objects would be in the first table but only planets would be in the second table and linked through a foreign key to the first table.
It's called Database Normalization
There are many normal forms. By applying normalization you will go through metadata (tables) and study the relationsships between data more clearly. By using the normalization techniques you will optimize the tables to prevent redundancy. This process will help you understand which entities to create based on the relationsships between the different fields.
You should most likely split the data about a planet etc so that the shared (common) information is in another table.
E.g.
Common (Table)
Diameter (Column)
Mass (Column)
Planet
Population
Comet
Speed
Poor columns I know. Have the Planet and Comet tables link to the Common data with a key.
This is definitely a subjective question. It sounds like you are already on the right lines of thinking. I would ask:
Do these objects share many attributes? If so, it's probably worth considering at the very least a base table to list them all in.
Does one object "extend" another - it has all the attributes of the other, plus some extras? If so, it might be worth adding another table with the extra attributes and a one-to-one mapping back to the base object.
Do both objects have many shared attributes and unshared attributes? If this is the case, maybe you need a single table plus a "data extension" system where each object can have a type or category that specifies any amount of extra attributes that may be associated with it.
Do the objects only share one or two attributes? In this case, they are probably dissimilar enough to separate into multiple tables.
You may also ask yourself how you are going to query the data. Will you ever want to get them all in the same list? It's always a good idea to combine data into tables with other data they will commonly be queried with. For example, an "attachments" table where the file can be an image or a video, instead of images and video tables, if you commonly want to query for all attachments. Don't split into multiple tables unless there is a really good reason.
If you will ever want to get planets and comets in one single query, they will pretty much have to be in the same table if you want the database to work efficiently. Inheritance should be handled inside your app itself :)
Here's my answer to a similar question, which I think applies here as well:
How do you store business activities in a SQL database?
There are many different ways to express inheritance in your relational model. For example you can try to squish everything in to one table and have a field that allows you to distinguish between the different types or have one table for the shared attributes with relationships to a child table with the specific attributes etc... in either choice you're still storing the same information. When going from a domain model to a relational model this is what is called an impedance mismatch. Both choices have different trade offs, for example one table will be easier to query, but multiple tables will have higher data density.
In my experience it's best not to try to answer these questions from a database perspective, but let your domain model, and sometimes your application framework of choice, drive the table structure. Of course this isn't always a viable choice, especially when performance is concerned.
I recommend you start by drawing on paper the relationships you want to express and then go from there. Does the table structure you've chosen represent the domain accurately? Is it possible to query to extract the information you want to report on? Are the queries you've written complicated or slow? Answering these questions and others like them will hopefully guide you towards creating a good relational model.
I'd also suggest reading up on database normalization if you're serious about learning good relational modeling principals.
I'd probably have a table called [HeavenlyBodies] or some such thing. Then have a look up table with the type of body, ie Planet, comet, asteroid, star, etc. All will share similar things such as name, size, weight. Most of the answers I read so far all have good advise. Normalization is good, but I feel you can take it too far sometimes. 3rd normal is a good goal.
I have a class A that has a collection of objects of Class B.
Class A can also 'inherit' (for lack of a better term) the collection of objects of Class B from other instances of Class A. To model this, instances of Class A point to other instances of Class A (I control for circular references).
A simplified concrete example might be that a person has biological children but also 'inherits' children from their spouse and ex-spouses.
I use instances of class A with and without the inherited objects in my application at run-time. That is, both 'projections' of instances of Class A are meaningful to me in the context of my application in difference scenarios.
My question is, is there a pattern for coding this sort of model or standard terminology? I don't think 'inherit' is the right word here. I have my own ways of handling it technically and my own cumbersome terminology but I'm imagining there is a standard pattern I can adhere to that I just can't seem to find.
An imperfect analogue would be inspecting the methods of .NET classes with and without their inherited methods or inspecting prototypes in Javascript, but here I'm 'inheriting' records/objects.
Looks like the composite pattern to me, with A objects being composites and B leafs. The one object A that points to other objects A is a root item. The difference seems that when getting leaf items you distinguish whether the root item includes leaf items from other composites it knows of or not.
No, I don't think (A) there are common OOP idioms for what you're doing, nor (B) any prominent patterns similar to yours. And (C), that is absolutely fine. Now maybe you should be doing it this way and maybe you shouldn't be. Whenever you're doing something that you have a hard time describing, you should certainly second-guess yourself and wonder if there's a simpler way of doing it. But, the lack of common terminology for describing your model, and it not fitting into a "pattern" you've heard of, does not in itself indicate a problem. Classes sometimes have to do wacky stuff under the hood. That's the point. If you're encapsulating a lot of complexity for the consumers of these classes, and it's intuitive and logical and discoverable for them, then great!
It is a mistake though to improperly use common terms to try to help someone understand. In fact, your use of the term inherit above really confused me, and I'm still not 100% sure I have it. Is it this?
An object of class ClassA maintains a collection of ClassB objects. In addition, some of a ClassA object's functionality has to act upon not only its own ClassB objects, but those maintained by other ClassA objects as well. A ClassA object maintains references to other ClassA objects for this purpose.
Assuming I have it correct of course, I think that's a good way to decribe it. And since there is precisely no inheritance here, it would confuse people if that term were used. Also, do not ever, ever, every be distressed if what you're doing does not match some pattern somewhere.
I think your model is at fault. If two or more instances of a class have a relation with an instance of another class, the correct model is not to make one of the instances contain the third - it is to make both of them refer to the third. In the case of human parents, each should refer to the same "offspring" (a list of human children) object. You then control the referred to class via mechanisms such as reference counting.
OOP defines two basic types of relationships:
A is a B
A has a B
Within the second category you have subcategories:
A contains B
B is a component of A
A is associated with (or references) B
The first two are similar, but your concrete example clearly refers to the 3rd. Parents do not contain children, they are related to their children, and when somebody marries into family, they have new relationships (associations) created with the existing family.
So I guess the answer is no, there is no "pattern." You are simply copying/transforming a set of relationships from one instance to another.