Steve, Filip: Many thanks for your patient answers and concerns. Did'nt know hstore!
=> Is it enough to run the hstore.sql (found in ..\8.3\share\contrib\ plus .dll) in order to install this contrib type under Windows? => What's the status of this contribution? Is it going to be still in 8.4? (else I would still consider Arrays). As for the background: I'm importing data from OpenStreetMap - "the Wikipedia of Maps" - actuall by applying "good" database design principles. This entity-attribute-value model get's mapped to a relational one. Now I won't and can't map all attributes (called tags). That's where the idea about associative arrays came in. The KVPs would be an ANDed in a search with "regular" columns. So, my answer to Leif's hot-blooded judgment about KVPs could be: "Know when to break the rules" ;-> -S. 2009/5/23 Steve Atkins <st...@blighty.com> > > On May 23, 2009, at 2:25 AM, Stefan Keller wrote: > > I have a use case where the I want to put an unforeseable number of >> key/value pairs in a column. >> Now, PostgreSQL has arrays as first class types. >> Are there any best practices and snippets (preferrably in plpgsql) for >> handling key/value pairs? >> > > Take a look at "hstore". It's a data type in contrib that's intended to > store a set of key, value > pairs in a single column. > > It's well suited for the case where you're not searching on the keys and > values. If you do > need to search on them then you can either index the hstore field with a > gin or gist index, > or use a separate EAV table for the keys and values. > > Cheers, > Steve > > > > -- > Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) > To make changes to your subscription: > http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general >
