Re: Hierachical structures - an overview

"Mike MacSween" <mike.macsween.nospam_at_btinternet.com> wrote in message news:3ff84b97$0$52880$5a6aecb4_at_news.aaisp.net.uk...
> "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote in message
> news:bt94ta$r1r$1_at_news.netins.net...
>
> > OK, I'm sucked into the discussion with this topic heading, having opted
> out
> > of the discussion when you were trolling only for SQL-based solutions.
>
> I beg your pardon? I wasn't trolling atall. Perhaps you mean trawling?

Sorry 'bout that, Mike--it is whatever one does when fishing. I shouldn't try for sports analogies even though I hear that they now suggest women figure out sports analogies to make their way in the business world ;-). I was off my turf, so I'll try for a homerun in this response.

>But
> yes, this will be implemented in
> Jet, SQL Server or at a very outside chance MySQL.
>
> I've looked very briefly at MV databases. But aren't going to go there
now.

You do not have to use MV to use this model as it is the model of XML and the di-graph of web pages too. In fact, almost every model except for a SQL-based RDBMS would give you and easier go at this. But it is aslo possible with and RDBMS.

>
> I've considered an RDBMS structure like the one you outline. Production
(top
> level) Jobs (middle levels with recursion) and Events (bottom level).

Good -- I suspect it could work well for you. The difficulty implementing this in an RDBMS is the links (foreign keys). If you think of implementing this in web pages (obviously not the right way to do this for various reasons), you would have both links and "return links" to navigate both directions in the chain. One of these directions is an array/list/relation of links which means yet another frickin' table in an RDBMS. But I would aim for thinking the way a person filing this information manually might think for a period of time to get a handle on that approach when doing your design for an RDBMS.

Cheers. --dawn

> Yours, Mike MacSween
>
>
Received on Sun Jan 04 2004 - 18:58:34 CET