I am starting to think about writing an RoR app to store some 2-D data. Most of the data are textual, although there could be a column of dates or a column of numbers here and there. The issue is: different data sets have different columns.
Currently, the data are stored in spreadsheets. Many of the sheets share a common set of columns, but there are some differences (and more differences could be added later -- after all, they are just spreadsheets, and I can change the heading at the top of a column and start filling in data for that column at will.) Is this a common problem? If so, how have folks solved it? One solution might be to say, "You are an agile RoR developer (ok, it's a bit of a stretch, but for the purpose of this argument, let's pretend it's true), adding a column to a database is just as easy as adding a column to a spreadsheet. Design the application with the columns you know about today. Add more columns tomorrow when you discover/decide you need them." Another solution might be to create a table of headings for each column and create a table with just text values associated with each type of heading (and associated with the other table(s) to which the data belongs). Do the same thing for the numeric data and the date data. Design the application so it's easy to add columns via the UI. Another solution might be to do something completely different. Any ideas/suggestions? --wpd --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
