Re: Nearest Common Ancestor Report (XDb1's $1000 Challenge)

From: thirdrock <iktaccounts>
Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 12:57:46 +1000
Message-ID: <opr8drukfyh454zx_at_news.optusnet.com.au>


On Tue, 18 May 2004 22:46:30 +0200, Hugo Kornelis <hugo_at_pe_NO_rFact.in_SPAM_fo> wrote:

>
> Note also that MS SQL Server, the RDBMS I do most work on at the moment,
> supports a datatype "sql_variant", that will store basically everything.
> I
> have never used this datatype, not have I ever seen a question in any SQL
> Server related newsgroup (and I participate in quite a few of them) where
> this datatype would be the answer. And I expect I never will.
>

I wouldn't use it either, but not for the same reason. Every variant I have ever used from Microsoft has been a baroque piece of shit. There are third party implementations of variants for C++ that are extremely usefull. And of course you have unions that allow you to use a single structure for any type of data (something that MS uses inside SQL server).
I suppose at the 4GL there are very few applications of variants, but at the lower level, building RDBMSs for example, they are totally neccessary.

Cheers,
Ian

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Received on Sat May 22 2004 - 04:57:46 CEST

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