Information Oriented Table

An InformationOrientedTable is a table that contains information that is above the standard 'table is an entity' nature of a relational database. Examples include

Information oriented tables are a step toward InformationOrientedSoftwareDevelopment?. They can be considered an AntiPattern when used in a heavily DataOriented system. This is because the data oriented paradigm seems to want to force every entity to be a table.


Data are simply facts or figures — bits of information, but not information itself. When data are processed, interpreted, organized, structured or presented so as to make them meaningful or useful, they are called information. Information provides context for data.

The Academic field of Informatics is the study of information, and has some very precise definitions.

Perhaps the problem is that we have become so data oriented that we are losing our definition of information.

I doubt it. To the extent that a distinction between "data" and "information" is meaningful, "information" almost invariably means "the data I was looking for."

I agree; to paraphrase what was said earlier, I think information is data provided with a context: one needs to know what questions were asked for the answers to have any value. That could go through any number of degrees of abstraction: an RDBMS's INFORMATION SCHEMA formalises a set of questions that may be asked about the system, so in that sense it's "information-oriented", but the result of querying it becomes data to another round of questioning. At the other extreme: "show the raw data" - curious that the noun seems to need qualifying.

Information can be:


CategoryInformation


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