Tuesday, November 18
Minus Threeth Normal Form
A list. In a string. In a field. In a table. In a relational database. With seventy-four million records.
A line-feed delimited list. Containing entries that are themselves lists. With data-dependent delimiters. Wonderful delimiters, like " --> ", for example. It's as if Codd had never lived.
You're not supposed to have to write parsers to pull data out of a database. That's the whole [bad word] point of [bad word] databases.
Mind you, the people responsible have been sacked. That's why I get to work on it.
Well, at least it's not nibble-aligned.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:25 AM
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1
:D At work, I'm trying to help some people translate our database to their Oracle-based system. What I work with - Model 204 - has no defined record structure within a file, which gives perfect flexibility. So if we need a field to occur zero times, once, twice, or hundreds of times in one record, it just does. I keep waiting for heads to explode ala Scanners as they try to wrap their minds around that concept.
Posted by: Ted at Tuesday, November 18 2003 11:05 AM (Qj620)
2
I have one word for you, "Perl".
Nothing beats it for parsing arbitrary text into records.
Posted by: Rossz at Wednesday, November 19 2003 02:55 AM (43SjN)
3
Perl. Fleagh. Gak. Blort. Plurf.
I don't like Perl.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 19 2003 09:06 AM (jtW2s)
4
Anyway, the problem is not parsing the data, the problem is discovering all the differnt (undocumented!) formats that the data is stored in so that it can be parsed in the first place.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 19 2003 09:07 AM (jtW2s)
5
Lets see. I did a data-logger in 6502 assembly language. Absolute assembler. Counting jumps, in hex, on my fingers (more like split octal, I suppose). I did a little hack in Turbo Basic to add carriage returns to text files so I could read downloaded pr0n from the bbs.
I've done data entry into a few inventory packages, one criminally wrong for the application (written for widgets; used for metal bar sold by the foot and the pound).
I know better than to create a mess like that. I'd even admit I didn't have the needed skills, and lose face and employment, before I'd create a mess like that.
Posted by: triticale at Thursday, November 20 2003 02:58 AM (qS4j9)
6
That's a good point. It's the people who don't realise they lack the needed skills that are the real danger.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, November 20 2003 12:11 PM (jtW2s)
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