[SCL] Functional dependencies

[Chris Menzel]

On Sun, Jun 19, 2005 at 06:33:53PM -0400, John Sowa wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> I am currently writing the mapping from CGIF to CL
> semantics, and one of the CG constructs that we have
> been using is called an actor, which is defined to
> have two disjoint kinds of arcs:  input arcs and
> output arcs.
> 
> An actor with exactly one output arc is called
> a function, but in general, actors are relations
> that may have more than one output.
> 
> Question:  I'd like to ask whether anyone else finds
> this useful and worth putting into CL?  I can define
> the notion in CGs independently of whether it is
> explicitly recognized in CL, but I would like to know
> whether other people might consider it useful.

I don't see how they add anything to the notion of a relation.  Can you
explain?