Once again I hit send a little premature. What I'm really looking for is a technical explaination of the correct/ incorrect way to acheive this... I'm sure it's a problem that someone, somewhere had to solve once before and I've been trying to reinvent it, as i said - with separate tables for the columns, column groups, rows, tables... but in the end - merging all the tables together and iterating over everything just seems to take forever... not in the least bit efficient or reliable.
On Feb 10, 8:28 am, "frankjmat...@gmail.com" <frankjmat...@gmail.com> wrote: > 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.- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
