ah, thank you. any response - even yours - feels good. i realize this isnt the most thoroughly explained post so here goes.
i have a need allow my program to create and store variable column data much like the sense of a spreadsheet where at any given time, only a handful of columns will be accessed - but over the lifetime of the "spreadsheet" (table seems too broad a term for me), all the columns and all the rows will slowly become filled..... if you would imagine this scenario: UserA defines/"creates" TableOne. TableOne has ColumnOne, ColumnTwo, ColumnThree, ColumnFour. UserB needs access to ColumnOne and ColumnTwo recognized as ColumnGroupOne. UserC needs access to ColumnThree and ColumnFour recognized as ColumnGroupTwo. now the row count is generally fixed (not truely fixed but not sporatic) but isnt known in advance. rows are not identified by their primary key but by another column called "ToolNumber" which is specified in the ColumnGroup. UserA and UserB may be modifying a record that names the same ToolNumber and ultimately, upon the table/spreadsheets completion - will all be consolidated into one master sheet which contains all Rows and ColumnGroups merged into one table displayed for the user or print or whatever. Hopefully that gives you a better idea of what im asking for. Sparse tables may be a meaningful term but I am most certainly stretching the definition so that may be a point of confusion and I understand that. Many thanks, - FJM On Feb 10, 7:46 am, Randy Kramer <rhkra...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tuesday 10 February 2009 12:05 am, frankjmat...@gmail.com wrote: > > > ive asked this question a half a dozen different ways and none have > > ever gotten an answer. > > (Just an aside--is everybody switching to top posting--where's the > context, what's the question--must I read the rest of the post to find > the question? (Sorry, I'm in a funky mood, on another list I read, > some guy quoted a long post, and somewhere in the middle of it posted a > short phrase response (less than a line). What a pain.) > > Anyway, after skimming the rest of the post, I'm not entirely sure of > your question: > > * do you want pointers on how to search for "sparse tables" on > google, or > * do you want help on storing "variable column sparse tables"--ahh, I > didn't see the variable column part the first time I skimmed > > Anyway, before I saw that, I was going to say that a relational data > base (which is what Rails uses (iiuc, something like MySQL, Postgresql > (??), or whatever, is something like a sparse table because tables > don't have to be "complete"--for example, if the key field is some > numerical index, you can have records 001, 006, and 046--you don't have > to have a line for every record from 001 thru 046. > > But I guess that's not what you mean by "variable column sparse tables". > So what do you mean? You mean where (starting with my sparse example > above ;-), some records (lines) do not have a value for every column? > Maybe something like this: > > View in fixed font: > key lastname firstname height weight hatsize shoesize > 001 Mattia Frank 5'11" 7 1/4 10 > 006 Doe John 5'6" 165 > 046 Jane 5'5" > > If that's what you're looking for, as far as I know, tables like this > can exist in a relational data base and not really cause any problem. > A pedant would (I think) make some comment about the data not being > fully normalized, and maybe some slightly less efficiency that would be > experienced if you had many (i.e., thousands, millions) of such > records. > > OTOH, normalizing the database (typically) takes effort both by the > programmer / database administrator and in the database itself (running > queries or whatever to actually accomplish the normalization, so for > small quantities of data (I would argue that) it is not efficient to > normalize the data. > > > > afaik i need a table for my rows > > > a table for my columns > > > a table for cells. > > > and a table of "tables" > > I haven't thought through what the above is about, but at a quick skim > it sounds like the kind of tables and effort that would be needed to > normalize the database. Like I said, for some definitions of small, > this is counterproductive for small quantities of data (imho). > > If your question is something else, maybe you can clarify. > > Randy Kramer > -- > I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I created a video > instead.--with apologies to Cicero, et.al. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
