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Posted by Tim Streater on 10/24/32 11:48
In article <xvHcg.10455$S.4851@newsfe3-win.ntli.net>,
Oli Filth <catch@olifilth.co.uk> wrote:
> Tim Streater said the following on 23/05/2006 17:49:
> > I have some items, numbered from 0 upwards. Some of them may have a
> > string attached. All these items need to be represented in a single
> > already existing database record. So, I thought of taking an array, as
> > it might be looking thus (the values are all strings):
> >
> > Key Value
> > --- -----
> > 0 firstone
> > 2 somestring
> > 5 anotherstr
> >
> >
> > and so on, and converting it to a single string:
> >
> > "'0', 'firstone', '2', 'somestring', '5', 'anotherstr'"
> >
> > then I have a string I can write to the database record.
> >
>
> Is it absolutely mandatory that you put these into a single record?
> This is almost certainly a bad idea. Not only do you have to write
> conversion functions to get data into and out of the database, but you
> data is no longer atomic. Amongst other things, this makes it difficult
> to search, index, delete or reference your data...
The one record in question is for an interface card, typically in a
router or an SDH box. Up to now the ports on the card have been
considered identical and are numbered incrementally, so I have just kept
a record for the card, with a field numports. Now we wish to keep
information about the port optics (short-reach, long-reach, etc). With
the advent of plug-in optics this may vary from port to port.
The most general/flexible/futureproof way to do this would evidently be
to have a set of port-records, pointing to the interface card. Then,
obviously, the optics information would just be a field in the port
record.
I have resisted doing it this way up to now, because:
1) this would be a major change to the way the data is held, and more
importantly, displayed on our web pages, and interacted with.
2) it would prolly slow down the functionality a lot as there would be
an extra layer of things to do per port.
3) It's seemed a bit heavy to do this for just one bit of information
per port
4) I haven't got time to do this much work on this item.
So, I am looking for a quick'n'dirty fix :-) which will cause minimal
disruption on the rest of the structure.
I agree with your prospective downsides.
-- tim
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