[thelist] [DB Design] Recursive Directory Structure

rudy r937 at interlog.com
Sat Feb 1 20:34:01 CST 2003


> i'm surprised rudy didn't point you at this:
> (since i found it on his site in the first place, hehe)
> http://www.sqlteam.com/item.asp?ItemID=8866

well, probably because we need to learn how to walk before we can run

thanks for the plug, by the way   ;o)

can i make one myself?  http://r937.com/sqlate.cfm


the nested hierarchy problem is, i am convinced, a usability problem and not
one of technical under-the-covers wizardry

yeah, there are ways of making tree retrieval perform really well, and .jeff
will be along shortly, i'm sure, to explain his augmented version of celko's
method (i *still* have no clue how to populate and maintain it)

but perfomance isn't really the point, is it

once performance becomes an issue, you're talking about a large database,
multiple levels, and concommitant with this, you typically don't want to
traverse the entire tree!!

show me a major site where you, as the user, can explode the entire tree

what's your favourite nested hierarchy example?

dmoz? nope, it's drill down, one click at a time

about the only example i can think of is a site map, a theoretical explosion
of all subtrees to their bottom (leaf nodes)

but show me a site map that's more than 4 levels deep that doesn't very
quickly become too wieldy (or is it unwieldy?)

to me, it is not a technical problem, it is a question of usability design


rudy




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