Re: The joy of SQL

On 10/30/24 10:21 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 01:55:35 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
 

SQL and flat-file DBs are kind of the all-gobbling monsters.
>
But MV is still the better, saner, way to organize many kinds of
data.

 The trouble with unnormalized fields is: how do you do updates? You have
to delete all the values and insert them all again.

   Updates CAN be annoying. The MAIN prob is that MV field/subfields
   and such can be structured in many ways, many possible paradigms.
   The 'solution' was a "data dictionary" which outlined how you
   were using/structuring the MV fields. This makes it much easier
   to do proper updates.
   In short it's super-easy to WRITE MV records, but reading
   and editing, you need a guide. Even to the end of my career
   I very often stored data as MV records, easy to build-up
   on the fly. Usually went the PICK way, various ASCII
   chars as delimiters.
   Creating all new records to deal with what should be MV data,
   I'm not sure this is a calculation or storage advantage all
   in all. It's just, well, stupid and simple so many just
   went that way.
   MV DBs still persist - commercial/share-licenced/free(?)
   At least SOME understand the reasoning.