Re: Impossible Database Design?

From: Jay Dee <ais01479_at_aeneas.net>
Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 23:29:26 GMT
Message-ID: <qr7bg.34689$mh.3065@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com>

Nikolai Onken wrote:

>>What would you base such a syntax on?

>
>
> Maybe the iCalendar standard is a good thing to start with?
>

iCal stanzas seem more like what the row results would be if they were marked-up.

I invented a tiny language that had some tokens for "beginning of" and "end of" various things, some "first" and "last" qualifiers, some day of week and month of year specifiers, and addition and subtraction -- so things like "last fri - 2" meant the Wednesday before the last Friday in a month. And I parsed and tokenized and interpreted the things in procedural language.

Man, talk about awkward! substr() this and instr() that and those stinky loop; exit when; end loop; constructions filled with if then end if; and my own push and pop and dynamic sql... But once you find the groove -- and the data have been correctly analyzed and properly stored -- you can crank out some product. Received on Thu May 18 2006 - 18:29:26 CDT