[thelist] Representing tasks in the database

Bill Moseley moseley at hank.org
Thu Apr 26 08:42:09 CDT 2007


I'm working on what would probably be called Project Manager "lite"
where I can assign tasks (or "todo" items, if you prefer) to some
object in the database.

The tasks are simple in that they have a created date, target
complete data and a descriptions.  They can be associated with one or
more people, too.

Here's where I'm looking for ideas:  a task can be dependent on one or
more other tasks being completed.  That is, the task itself cannot be
marked completed until the task or tasks it depends on are completed.

Hierarchical data in the database tends to give me a headache, so I'm
wondering if anyone has tips for managing this kind of data,
specifically.  I know Joe Celko has written quite a bit about
representing trees in a RDBMS and I've read about adjacency lists and
nested sets, but I'm wondering if there's a more simple solution.

I'm looking for general ideas at this point.  Or maybe someone that
says "Hey, I just did this!"

Thanks,


-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley at hank.org




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