Re: To all the pgsql developers..Have a look at the operators proposed by me in my research paper. - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Jun 1, 2007, at 8:24 AM, Tasneem Memon wrote:
> NEAR
>
> It deals with the NUMBER and DATE datatypes simulating the human
> behavior and processing the

Why just number and date?

> information contained in NEAR in the same way as we humans take it.
> This is a binary operator with the syntax:
> op1  NEAR  op2
> Here, the op1 refers to an attribute, whereas op2 is a fixed value,
> both of the same datatype.
> Suppose we want a list of all the VGAs, price of which should be
> somewhere around 30$ .. the query will look like:
>
> SELECT    *
> FROM      accessories
> WHERE    prod_name = ‘VGA’
> AND                prod_price NEAR 30
>
> A query for the datatype DATE will look like:
>
> SELECT    *
> FROM      sales
> WHERE    item = ’printer’
> AND                s_date NEAR 10-7-06
>
>
> The algorithm for the NEAR operator works as follows:
>
> The margins to the op2, i.e. m1 and m2, are added dynamically on
> both the sides, considering the value it contains. To keep this
> margin big is important for a certain reason discussed later.
> The NEAR operator is supposed to obtain the values near to the op2,
> thus the target membership degree(md) is initially set to 0.8.
> The algorithm compares the op1(column) values row by row to the
> elements of the set that NEAR defined, i.e. the values from md 1.0
> to 0.8, adding matching tuples to the result set.

How would one change 0.8 to some other value?

> 4.      It is very much possible that the result set is empty since
> no values within the range exist in the column. Thus, the algorithm
> checks for empty result set, and in that case, decreases the target
> md by 0.2 and jumps to step 3. This is the reason big margins to
> the op2 are added.
> 5.      In case there are no values in op1 that are between m1 and
> m2 (where the membership degree of the values with respect to NEAR
> becomes 0.1) and the result set is empty, the algorithm fetches the
> two nearest values (tuples) to op2, one smaller and one larger than
> the op2, as the result.
>
> The algorithm will give an empty result only if the table referred
> to in the query is empty.
>
> 2. NOT NEAR
>
>             This operator is also a binary operator, dealing with
> the datatype NUMBER and DATE. It has the syntax:
> op1  NOT NEAR  op2
> The op1 refers to an attribute, whereas op2 is a fixed value, both
> of the same data type.
>             A query containing the operator looks like:
>
> SELECT id, name, age, history
> FROM    casualties
> WHERE  cause = ‘heart attack’
> AND      age NOT NEAR 55
>
> Or suppose we need a list of some event that is not clashing with
> some commitment of ours:
>
> SELECT *
> FROM    events
> WHERE  e_name= ‘concert’
> AND      date NOT NEAR 8/28/2007
>
> The algorithm for NOT NEAR works like this:
> First of all it adds the margins to the op2, i.e. m1 and m2,
> dynamically on both the sides, considering the value op2 contains.
> op1 values outside the scope of the op2 (m1, m2) are retrieved and
> added to the result.
> If the result set is empty, the farthest values within the op2
> fuzzy set (those possessing the least membership degree) are
> retrieved. This is done by continuing the search from values with
> md=0.1 till the md=0.6, where the md for NOT NEAR reaches 0.4.

Why isn't this just the exact opposite set of NEAR?
--
Jim Nasby                                            jim@nasby.net
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)