Re: Mapping arbitrary number of attributes to DB

From: David Portas <REMOVE_BEFORE_REPLYING_dportas_at_acm.org>
Date: 23 Oct 2006 13:54:45 -0700
Message-ID: <1161636885.535467.304030_at_h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>


Joshua J. Kugler wrote:

>

> Sadly enough, I agree with both of you. The problem is, part of the way the
> data is represented is out of my control. Data is coming in from weather
> stations. Some of these stations may have 1 sensor (e.g. temperature),
> some of these stations may have many sensors (temperature, wind speed, soil
> temperature, humidity, air pressure, many of them redundant). Thus, each
> station can have a number of attributes that vary from one to dozens. I
> can't tell the scientists "You may have 32 sensors per station, no more, no
> less." That just won't work, for reasons I hope are obvious. :)

No-one except you suggested that.

So you'll need attributes for Wind Speed, Temperature, Humidity etc. Obviously those are very different domains so they belong in separate columns. If each type of reading is totally independent of the others then one would expect to see a separate table for each, with a common key presumably comprising the station number and a timestamp. This is of course totally unsupported guesswork on my part.

-- 
David Portas
Received on Mon Oct 23 2006 - 22:54:45 CEST

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