Re: A question for Mr. Celko

On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 14:05:01 +0000, Marshall Spight wrote:
> "Jan Hidders" <jan.hidders_at_REMOVETHIS.pandora.be> wrote in message
> news:pan.2004.07.19.09.35.30.941204_at_REMOVETHIS.pandora.be...

>> 
>> There are whole conferences
>> dedicated to optimization in list-manipulating languages.

Are you kidding? What if I have a lot of inserts in my list? Any idea about the asymptotic time and space complexity of that? And how about doubly linked lists? Or lists encoded in relational tables? You can do that with a simple index number (hard to update like the array) or logically simulate a linked list.

And remember we are not talking necessarily about data structures in memory but data structures on disk. That's a whole new ball game. And did you think about indexing structures for lists? What if we have interval queries? Ever heard of spatio-temporal indexes? Quad-trees? R-trees? K-d trees? These all come into play. And what if we start nesting things? If you cannot resist google for "xml query optimization" (xml is essentielly a data model of nested lists) and see a whole new universe of problems and solutions opening up.

Have I scared you a litte? I hope so. :-) If you just start googling around without a specific research question or objective then my guess is you will just drown and not really get anywhere.

May the focus be with you, ... :-)

• Jan Hidders