Adaytum agonised over this in 1995 with their OLAP product (now Cognos Planning and owned by IBM).
The developers (me included) wanted "hypercube", but we were told by our marketing department to stop frightening the customers. "Oh all right then: just cube," I said in pique. So, to my disgust, cube it became, even if (usually) unsymmetrical. I consoled myself with the thought of Times Square -- which isn't. I later saw that the rest of the OLAP market was using "cube" to mean a multidimensional table. They might have been doing so before but I hadn't noticed. So J can just go with the flow (...when has it ever done that?) or, like Humpty-Dumpty, call it what it likes. On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 3:10 AM, Henry Rich <[email protected]> wrote: > 'cube' was suggested. Raul objected that a cube should have all axes of > equal length. > > 'cuboid' has been used in Ye Dic (in the description of ;.0). According > to Wikipedia a cuboid should have rank 3. And the word seems strained. > > 'hyperrectangle' is used, but it's a fifty-cent word for a ten-cent idea. > > A fancier word is 'orthotope'. Great if you're a Greek scholar. > > Also, 'box', which would be perfect if we weren't using it already. > > How about 'brick'? or 'block'? > > I like 'brick', followed by 'cube'. > > Henry Rich > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
