On 01/27/2014 07:19 AM, Raymond O'Donnell wrote:
> On 27/01/2014 15:16, Edson Richter wrote:
>> Em 27/01/2014 10:42, Andreas Kretschmer escreveu:
>>> Raymond O'Donnell <rod@iol.ie> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 27/01/2014 12:11, Manoj Soni wrote:
>>>>> Name, Age and Sex
>>>>> Which tutorial, may help me in this regard.
>>>> I did a Google search on "tomcat netbeans postgresql tutorial" and
>>>> turned up some likely-looking links.... should work for you too. :-)
>>> Right, and as a hint: dont store the AGE of a person, store the
>>> birthdate instead.
>>>
>>>
>>> Andreas
>> Another hint: don't store "sex" (do/don't do?), but "gender" (even
>> better if tristate: male/female/not informed or "other").
>> I already had lots of trouble with customers asking me to adjust my
>> systems to this new "situation", then I've to change systems and
>> database...
> +1 to this... there was a lengthy thread on this list some years ago on
> this very subject, and it was an eye-opener to see the possibilities
> that emerged.
>
> Ray.
>
>
Actually, to be pedantic, use whichever is appropriate to your use-case.
If you are looking at biological/physiological attributes (chromosomes,
hormones, testicular-cancer, ...), use "sex."
If you are tracking social attributes or characteristics (preferred
dress-style, sexual-preference, income, prevalence in various
professional roles, etc.), use "gender."
See http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/
Either way, an expandable lookup-table may end up being useful. Just
when you think you are strictly dealing with "sex" and you hard-code for
"male" and "female", someone will show up and ask you to rewrite your
code to account for chimeras
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29).
Cheers,
Steve