On Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 11:45:08AM -0400, Vivek Khera wrote:
 
> I'm just starting, but I've got two questions.  I've found some
> scripts out there that claim to do the conversion of the SQL create
> commands, but none does the right thing it seems.

        Please help better these scripts then. That way you're helping
everybody, including yourself (with gained experience).
 
> I've now found out how to handle the timestamp for insert times and
> how to do auto-increment fields.
 
> My unsderstanding of MySQL's enum type is to use something like this
> in postgres:
> 
>  owner_status varchar(9) check 
>         (owner_status in ('pending','active','suspended'))
>         NOT NULL default 'pending',

        That's standard SQL, which PostgreSQL supports. You could use this
same statement in Oracle, or other compliant DBs.
 
> Currently in MySQL I have this:
> 
>  owner_features set('premium','haveccinfo') default NULL,
> 
> for example.  Some other fiels may have about 20 such values, and
> MySQL lets me keep these in 3 bytes as a bit-field behind the scenes.

        MySQL is helping you get into trouble by giving you a non-standard way
to do something for which there's a standard.

> >From what I see, my choice in Postgres is to store this as a
> comma-separated string and let my application work as before.

        For columns with more than a couple values, I'd suggest normalizing
your tables. In the "owner_features" case above, you could do something
like:

        create table owner_features (
                feature_id serial 
                        constraint owner_features_pk primary key,
                feature varchar(30)
                        constraint owner_features_feature_nn not null
        );

        Then your table would just reference owner_features.feature_id. Much
cleaner, especially for tables with lots of cases.

> Does anyone have a script that actually handles properly doing auto
> increments with the SERIAL type, and does the set/enum conversions?

        What do you mean by "propely doing auto increments"? What's the
problem you are having?

        -Roberto
-- 
+----| http://fslc.usu.edu USU Free Software & GNU/Linux Club |------+
  Roberto Mello - Computer Science, USU - http://www.brasileiro.net 
       http://www.sdl.usu.edu - Space Dynamics Lab, Developer    
Linux: What Windows will NEVER BE!

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your
message can get through to the mailing list cleanly

Reply via email to