Can all data be represented tabularly? ... assuming that tables allowed for nested non-primitive values.
I'm trying to think of any instance where data cannot be represented as tables (or a series of tables)... and I can't think of any. However, I'm skeptical of myself on this one... its seems too simple to defined a pseudo-law which state &quot;all data can be represented as tables&quot;.
Can anybody think of instances where this isn't true?
One way or another any data can be represented in a table or even in a big binary string, since after all the physical memory of a computer is just one big binary sequence. But the question is whether the table format adequately represents the semantics of any data, and the answer is definitely no: while there are tabular representations for graphs, text, images or videos, these representations simplify and/or make assumptions about the nature of the data. Virtually any representation is a simplification of the data it represents, but some representations are more faithful to the original data than others.