storing and matching sets in the database (was: sql query wanted)

From: Christian Mallwitz <mallwitz_at_acm.org>
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 12:01:26 +0100
Message-ID: <3C777686.E3BE1176@acm.org>

Thanks everybody,

From what I gather it seems I may try to rethink my original problem:

I have

1.) about 10000 items (sku's)
2.) about 5000 named (id) sets with up to 4-5 of these items 
3.) starting with some items as parameter I want to find all sets which

exactly match my paramater set

example (with fewer items and sets)
sets:

1: a
2: b
3: a b
4: c
5: a c 
6: a b
7: a b c 

if I have a,b as parameter my query should match set 3 and 6 but not e.g. 7 ...

Mayby storing it in a table like foobar (id varchar(10), sku varchar(10)) is not the best option to start with? I would figure relational databases are not the best way for storing sets but how are such problems best handled? I don't want to do this by programming (i.e. in pl/sql) but of course it should be fast anyway :-)

Thanks
Christian Received on Sat Feb 23 2002 - 05:01:26 CST