Return-Path: pg_adm@postgres.berkeley.edu
Received: by postgres.Berkeley.EDU (5.61/1.29)
	id AA22653; Fri, 3 Apr 92 20:47:50 -0800
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 92 20:47:50 -0800
Message-Id: <9204040447.AA22653@postgres.Berkeley.EDU>
From: clh@tfic.bc.ca (Chris Hermansen )
Subject: "large" classes
To: postgres@postgres.berkeley.edu
Sender: pg_adm@postgres.berkeley.edu

Gee, I joined the list yesterday and no flood of postings!  Not like the other
two lists I'm on... :-)

Anyway, for the question:  I have been messing around with Postquel trying to
learn a bit about it.  My DBMS experience comes primarily from an SQL (Ok, so
it's probably taboo to use the S-word here, sorry) product we use for a lot
of ad-hoc query and data analysis; Postquel seems more flexible and concise
so I thought I'd try it out on some of our "real" data.

Now, I don't typically normalize the daylights out of things, especially for
throwaway datasets that I often use.  So, my tables are often very wide.  Upon
trying such a wide monster with Postquel, I run into problems; the "copy from"
command seems to load the table with garbage, "append" seems to go off into
the ozone, etc.  So, I normalized the original data somewhat (outside of
Postquel) and tried again, and presto, things worked.  So OK, I now have a
more elegant design, but the question lingers: is there some obvious limit
to the number of attributes within a class?  Is there a good place in the
docs/src to look for things like this, or should I spend late hours searching
the entrails of the code for clues?  Or am I way off base?

I should hasten to add that I've given the docs and Postgres papers a hasty
read, but I'd be the first to admit I could have easily missed something.

And oh yes, this is version 3.0.

Thanks for the attention;

Just another Postgres rookie,

Chris Hermansen                         Timberline Forest Inventory Consultants
Voice: 1 604 733 0731                   302 - 958 West 8th Avenue
FAX:   1 604 733 0634                   Vancouver B.C. CANADA
clh@tfic.bc.ca                          V5Z 1E5

C'est ma facon de parler.