Member Avatar for Alisha_8

Hey Peeps,
Hope all are doing well. Happy to be a part of this community. So am fairly new in the programming world and exploring a few job opportunities in this field.

Coming to my query, So was going through this list of questions, although concepts seem easy to understand here, examples could be super helpful. Especially since these are interview questions, I wanted to go in-depth to understand each concept.

Q)Explain the difference between intention and extension in a database...Would be extremely grateful if someone out here can explain this with a help of a query.

Thanks..!

Edited by Alisha_8
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  • Latest Post Latest Post by rproffitt
Member Avatar for Alisha_8

Here is the link for reference.

commented: That link. Does it take me in circles? +16
Member Avatar for Dani

That link. Does it take me in circles?

Rproffitt is referring to the link you posted just pointing to this very page.

I had actually never heard of the words intension and extension of a database. However, from what I could tell from a Google search, the intension is the relational schema.

For example, it defines that I have one table of posters and that table has columns for the poster's ID # in the platform, poster's name, and other attributes about the poster. Then there's another table of posts and that table has columns for both the post ID # in the platform, the post message, as well as the poster's ID # who made the post. There's a relationship between the poster's ID # across both tables.

The extension are the actual rows of data themselves, contained within these tables.

Member Avatar for Alisha_8

Ohh yea, apologies, I meant to share this Link. Thanks, Dani for your reply.

Member Avatar for rproffitt

I'm going to answer that intension, while explained at the web site you finally linked to appears to be much like "intention." I feel the English dictionary definition will suffice here.

Member Avatar for Dani

I have no clue what you're referring to, rproffitt? Huh??

That being said, I don't understand why DaniWeb is flagging the link as broken when it's not. Weird. I'll check that out later today.

Either way, I took a look at the link, and it seems as if these are concepts that really aren't fully grasped until you just do them. For example, I could explain what a loop is conceptually, but you don't really get it until you code it.

What I suggest you do is install PHP+MySQL (or some other backend language + database server stack of choice) on your local computer (or on a server you have access to), and play around with it. Go through these questions such as "Explain the difference between the DELETE and TRUNCATE command" ... Well, run these two commands yourself and see the difference.

When it comes to intension and extension of a database, I believe these are just words that describe overall concepts and can't really be demonstrated with any specific query. I hope my answer a few posts up was helpful.

commented: Hey Dani, can you please help why the link have the cross lines on it? +0
Member Avatar for rproffitt

For Dani. I took the time to go to the site which writes "Intension or popularly known as database schema is used to define the description of the database and is specified during the design of the database and mostly remains unchanged."

So with that defined I extended that concept to include the English dictionary "the internal content of a concept" as well as how a database schema can also give us a view of the intention of said database.

Seems clear to me.

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