On Thu, 06 Jul 2000, Shimpei Yamashita wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 05, 2000 at 09:10:12PM -0500, Christopher Browne wrote:
> > I would anticipate that having the basic representation be via
> > rational numbers (e.g. - numerator + denominator in each entry) will
> > _prevent_ using an SQL DBMS, because SQL DBMSes generally do not
> > contemplate that representation.
>
> I do not understand why this would be the case. It is probably true that
> most SQL DBMSes do not offer rational numbers as a data type, but you can
> simulate one by having two integer columns per rational number to be
> represented; row selection is atomic in DBMSes, so there shouldn't be any
> problems with consistency.
The problems are that:
1) You cannot have the database perform summations for you. You would be
required to extract every LE and perform the arithmetic in the engine.
For small databases, this would not be too bad. However, any serious business
uses would make this too inefficient.
2) If you assume that all of the denominators for a given currency are the
same, you have not really gained anything by storing them repeatedly. And you
have introduced an additional possibility of error trying to enforce the
assertion that they are the same.
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