Tuple... an Explanation
Tuple
Within Planimate a Tuple is considered to be a collection of data components stored in a row of a table or on an item in the form if item attributes.
Planimate offers a variety of Routine Operations that assist in the transfer of the tuple information between item and tables. These are listed below.
Tuple Routine Operations
Tuple Defined
Mathematically a Tuple is considered to be a sequence or 'Ordered list' of a specific number of values. Traditionally tuples are described as an n-Tuple where n represents the number of values within the ordered list.
Programming languages such as C, LISP, make use of tuples as a data type. Common uses for the tuple as a data type include, for passing a string of parameters from one program to another, and representing a set of value attributes in a relational database. In some languages, tuples can be nested within other tuples within parentheses or brackets or other delimiters. Importantly, tuples can contain a mixture of other data types.
The Difference in Planimate
Planimate makes use of the term tuple a little more loosely.
The key differences include:
- In Planimate, a tuple is implicitly set by the names of items attributes and table columns that happen to match. Usually they are more explicitly defined.
- Other languages provide greater opportunities to manage tuples as a collection of records. In Planimate, a single item can only carry multiple tuples only if their element names don't clash.
- Other languages support different data types (int, float, strings) as members of their tuple's and complain if you mix things up. Planimate treats everything as floating point numbers. Planimate doesn't have the luxury of being compiled to assembly like other languages, slowing data processing.