Polygon data modelling question

I have a question concerning a data model quandry I've gotten myself into. I need to store the absolute coordinates of pieces of wood as they exist in a truss, so that I can draw an entire truss. My original idea was to store pc_id, coord_id, xcoord, ycooord, zcoord for each coordinate for each piece in a table called pcs_coord. However, there is also the option of simply storing a comma delimited text-string in a single field and then pulling out that field's data and parsing it each time for to draw it. So my question is: what is the best way to do this? We won't be doing too much editing of the coordinates, if any, for now. We will be using these coordinates to generate pictures only for now. The only reason I like each coord as a row is that it makes it easier for me, in the future, to pull back these coordinates in an XML format like Scalable Vector Graphics without having to do parsing. Also, I can more easily find the max coordinates to do some scaling. But a co-worker says that if you never want to only return one row, ie one point, then it shouldn't be a row and that storing coordinates individually is a common mistake people make and we should learn from them. Does anyone have any ideas on what I should do?

Thanks in advance,
John Palmer Received on Wed Jan 16 2002 - 17:44:21 CET