Subject: database design
From: "deco" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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I'm having a problem getting this to fit...
I have a file with a bunch of data stored... This data represents messages,
one after the other, with message header followed by message data.
I'm porting this to a mysql database. The thing is the message data is
defined in an external file, which defines foi each message type a bunch of
fields that can be double, long, short, ushort, etc...
I can parse this file easily, and i'm storing this data in java with no
difficulty.
The thing is: My DB would be something like:
A table holding data types (not programming types, but "data" types), which
holds information about every type that can appear in a file...
Another one where values read from the file are stored, with a foreign key
to the corresponding "data" type.
Thing is: if the value for this "data" types can be a double, or a long, or
a char, or a short, if my table is like (data_type, value) what field type
would i give to value? Cause it can be a lot of things. I can put the
biggest one, but then i would be using a lot more space to hold the db than
i would need.
I was hoping for some possibility of a dynamic size field, that could answer
to my needs... Maybe i'll need to set it as a binary object or something.
Any help?
Thanks in advance
Ricardo Rocha
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