Re: [OT] Lack of IEEE values in Oracle

"Jonathan Lewis" <jonathan_at_jlcomp.demon.co.uk> wrote in news:1004951195.27729.0.nnrp-10.9e984b29_at_news.demon.co.uk:

> Obviously my next comments relate more to
> application requirements than the raw input -
> but even if I had a facility for storing the incoming
> data in its incoming form (which you do in
> Oracle with the RAW type), I would probably look
> at splitting the stream into three tables -
> Values within the specified range
> Special values known to be messages
> Values deemed to be garbage

The last item on your list is the problematic one, since some companies/governments require an exact record of the incoming field values for reporting and/or disaster analysis purposes. Think of it as the "black box" for a SCADA system -- no diddling of values are allowed -- they must be exact.
In actual fact, our system handles field data as follows:

    	Actual raw value
    	Engineering value (after conversions)
    	Quality indicator (good/bad/suspect/out of range/etc)

> But I can appreciate why you think it is vital
> to store numbers as IEEE format.

IEEE format is an extremely common standard in this world, and I find it problematic (and expensive) that I have to write middleware to deal with them.

-- 
Murray Peterson
Email: murray_peterson_at_shaw.ca (remove underscore)
URL:   http://members.shaw.ca/murraypeterson/