> From: John Bazik [mailto:m...@johnbazik.com] > Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] sharealike trigger > > On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 10:46:30PM -0700, Paul Norman wrote: > > What do you mean by fields? > > I mean columns in RDBMS tables.
I don't believe you can make any general comment about columns in a RDBMS table. For example, you could use a RDBMS as a k-v store and store both OSM data and a completely unrelated set of photos in it. On the other hand, you could use a schema which is in 3NF and then the OSM database is over many different tables. As a practical matter, most data consumers probably want an un-normalized table because they are only reading. I had thought about saying something about tables in un-normalized forms, but I'm not sure if it's general enough. I still believe it's best to avoid talking about a technology-specific way of storing databases, particularly when the OSM database comes as an XML file, which is closer to a set of flat text files than an RDBMS in many ways. I also found when I shifted my thinking to avoid using any terms from a particular way of storing databases the database directive became clearer. > > One description for the OSM map database (planet.osm) is a database of > > georeferenced shapes (including points) with associated data (what the > > shape > > represents) and meta-data (time edited, user edited by, etc). I am > > very > > And OSM excludes *some* of that meta-data from what it considers to be > derived - "fields" like "user edited by." I'm not sure what you mean. The meta-data included in planet.osm is part of the OSM map database, although most consumers drop the user-related metadata because it unnecessary for most applications. > In RDBMS terms, might one expect to use a SELECT to produce a derivative > "database," excluding non-derivative data? Well, in RDBMS terms SELECT produces a rowset which is closer to a table, not a "database". _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
