Attribution tuples (was Re: HLL Primitives)

[Armin Rigo]

Hello Brian,

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 11:14:12PM -0800, Brian T Rice wrote:
> <key, object(s), value(s)>
> 
> There's still an issue with distinguishing object and value
> conglomerations as conglomerations rather than the objects that the
> conglomerations *are*

Just my two cents.  If I'm right, in Arrow, arrows themselves (which
correspond to the <key, object, value> tuples) were first-class citizens, and
were the only kind of objects available.  Here it seems that the tuple is just
a specific kind of "tuple" object that may or may not be reified.

Thus the notion of conglomeration seems more fundamental in Arrow than here.  
I don't think there is a fundamental way to define or represent
conglomerations here.  It could be any defined property that may or may not be
reified as a set of tuples.  Am I making sense here?

The closest thing I see to the notion of "set of arrows" is given by a key.  
For example, a function given by "key" may be conceptually identified with the
set of all <object, value> such that <key, object, value>.  Is it more
fundamental than, say, the set of attributes of a given object (i.e. the set
of all <key, value> such that <key, object, value>) ?


A bientôt,

Armin.