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Re: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" myth come f

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" myth come from?
• From: David Lyon <david.lyon@c...>
• Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:15:19 -0500
• Cc: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>
• In-reply-to: <4213023A.9050907@z...>
• References: <00d801c512a9$bda2c020$6aa58bac@aldebaran> <4212F02A.8040805@r...> <4213023A.9050907@z...>
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On Wednesday 16 February 2005 03:20 am, Rick Marshall wrote:
> not all databases are backward enough to store dates and numbers in
> binary format

Sorry to put you on the spot rick, but which ones don't? 

I thought most modern databases use a floating point to store datetimes with 
the non-decimal part denoting the day and decimal part denoting the time.

> and you don't necessarily save space in binary formats either - been
> there before too.

A few bytes possibly, not enough to make it worthwhile.

In fact I would assert that a text format:

 Soccer_kickoff@=2005-02-28 T 11:30 AM -10:00

is pretty compact and succinct.

28 bytes of date/time text compared to 8 bytes in a binary format but with
no readability. I don't think that is too bad.

but times are not as often transmitted as dates.

 balance_payable@=2005-03-15

In most business data transfer systems, I think dates get transferred a lot
more than times. But obviously, having a field type that does both is a 
fairly trivial thing.

David

-- 
Computergrid : The ones with the most connections win.

• References:
  • RE: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" myth come from?
    • From: "Alessandro Triglia" <sandro@m...>
  • Re: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" mythcome from?
    • From: Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@r...>
  • Re: Re: Where does the "nothing left but toolkits" mythcome from?
    • From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>

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