After a brief introduction to the scope of a project digitizing the Confucian Analects and a short explanation of the working principles of relational databases in general the architecture of the actual relational database used in the project is outlined. The database was designed to store, classify, compare and sort textual variants and to handle a considerable number of textual witnesses in such a way that strains of transmission could be compared with one another. Some attention is also paid to the handling of problems typical for manuscripts like illegible or doubtful characters, lacunae and non-standard characters that are not included in the Unicode standard. The database is further enhanced by a tagging system allowing to classify and to analyze different types of variants. Finally an evaluation of the whole system and suggestions for its further development are given. 在簡短的介紹完數位化孔子《論語》專案的概況及對於關係資料庫的一般工作原則之說明後，此計畫所使用的關係資料庫架構得由此可見其輪廓。此資料庫用以設計為貯存、分類、比較並排序文本的差異，同時處理相當數量文本見證，依此，不同的傳承系譜能夠有所比較。另外也關注一些處理寫本上的典型問題，例如難辨認的或可疑的字元，脫漏及未被包含在Unicode標準的非標準字元。此資料庫更進一步由標籤系統加強，可以歸類及分析差異的不同型態。另外，此文也提供一完整系統評估及進一步發展的建議。
目次
Introduction 151 Scope of the Project 151 The Relational Database Approach 152 Relational Databases 153 Chopping up the Analects 154 The Reference System 154 The Variants 155 The Representation of Lacunae, Doubtful Readings and Rare Characters 157 Classifying the Witnesses 158 The Main Lines of Descent 158 The Commentarial Traditions 159 Types of Witnesses 159 Classifying the Variants 161 Evaluation of the System 163 Capabilities 163 Problems 164 References 166
