Explain Term Lists

Question from:Alan Boarder Tue, 25 Mar 1997 17:37:56 +0000

Explain's Termlistinfo and Termlistdetail are intended to explain term lists corresponding to databases; may they be used to explain term lists for the Explain database? I.e. Termlists for Use attribute available in Explain, for example, for "ExplainCategory".

Technically, that approach is valid. True, ExplainCategory is a Use attribute, and a term lists is often associated with a Use attribute.

But usually a term list exists when you cannot easily predict the values of the list, not when there is a discrete, well-known set of potential values.

A term list for ExplainCategory would exist presumably to allow a client to determine the set of categories supported. And of course this presumes that the client has implemented Scan which would otherwise not be necessary, to support Explain. A client would probably be more likely to try to determine the list of categories by first trying to retrieve the categoryList record. Therefore it would seem more productive for a server to implement the categoryList category than to implement an ExplainCategory term list.