Is it possible to have an array in a table?

#11

On 01.09.2009 06:02, Ramon F Herrera wrote:

Quote:

On Aug 22, 4:07 pm, Ramon F Herrera <ra... (AT) conexus (DOT) net> wrote:
Can a table contain data arranged in two dimensions, and accessible
through a pair of integer subscripts?

I can live with 1-dimensional arrays, too.

TIA,

-RFH

Thanks to everyone for their help...

I would like to provide a specific example of what I am trying to
accomplish. Let's say I run a circus and every day I get the totals
sold in a given week.

Categories are: ticket sales, cotton candy, souvenirs, etc.

My application needs to display the sales like this:

Ticket Sales
8/22/2009: $8492.10
8/15/2009: $9024.31
8/8/2009: $7893.03
8/1/2009: $8945.67

As far as I can see you just want to condense daily data into weekly
data. So that would make for me

category, date, amount
index on: category, date (maybe even IOT)

and then

select first_day_in_week(date), sum(amount) amount
from your_table
where cat = 'Ticket Sales'
and date >= first_day_in_week(sysdate() - 6 weeks) -- note: just informal
group by first_day_in_week(date)
sort by first_day_in_week(date)

Quote:

People keep on recommending the SQL paradigm, but the above looks to
me like something that must be handled by arrays.

Nature of usenet is that you might not always get the answer you
expected. I don't see any advantage of using arrays here - in fact it
will likely hinder portability.

Quote:

I need to display the 6 most recent weeks and I keep on pushing the
most recent sales figures at the top, while I roll down and eventually
drop the oldest data. This kind of think MUST be handled with an
index, such as week-1 or week-2.

If I followed the relational model, I would need to hardcode records
such as:

CURRENT_WEEK
WEEK_MINUS_1
WEEK_MINUS_2
etc.

No, you don't. You can use date and time arithmetic.

Quote:

That would be a nightmare to code.

So, the question is how to implement the records (with arrays?) for a
rolling scenario like the above described.

You somehow seem to be hooked on the idea that your tabular data must
change with every week. Instead you should store the original dates and
use math to determine the records you need.

Kind regards

robert

--
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end
http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

Is it possible to have an array in a table?

comp.databases.oracle.misc comp.databases.oracle.misc

Re: Is it possible to have an array in a table? (again) - 09-01-2009 , 01:09 AM