[comp.databases] Support for variable-length arrays of records

aoki@hermes.Berkeley.EDU (Paul M. Aoki) (11/24/90)

I've poked around a bit but have been unable to find much information
on DBMS support for variable-length record arrays (sequences of
records).  I'm not talking about variable-length attributes or
attribute arrays (like char[]); I'm interested in things like the
arrays supported by the EXTRA data model for EXODUS -- variable-length
arrays of first-class objects that can have new elements inserted into
arbitrary positions.  These are somewhat like LISP lists, really.
However, a DBMS that supported persistent LISP lists like
non-persistent LISP does, i.e., with cons cells, would really eat it
on lists of any length.

I imagine there are plenty of OODBMS folks who have dealt with this
issue.  What general approaches were used?  Or did *everyone* punt and
do something like stick all of the array elements (or object
pointers) inside another object?
--
    Paul M. Aoki   |   aoki@postgres.Berkeley.EDU   |   ...!ucbvax!aoki

aoki@hermes.Berkeley.EDU (Paul M. Aoki) (11/25/90)

aoki@hermes.Berkeley.EDU (Paul M. Aoki) writes:
>I've poked around a bit but have been unable to find much information
>on DBMS support for variable-length record arrays (sequences of
>records).

Wouldn't you know it, I dug a little deeper in my periodical stack 
tonight and found some references (an "implementation of" paper on
O2 and the storage manager paper on EXODUS).

As they say: "Never mind."
--
    Paul M. Aoki   |   aoki@postgres.Berkeley.EDU   |   ...!ucbvax!aoki