In article <bdm7fif28r...@mid.individual.net>, Gregory Ewing <greg.ew...@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Nick the Gr33k wrote: > > I just want a mysql column type that can be eligible to store an array > > of elements, a list that is, no need for having a seperate extra table > > for that if we can have a column that can store a list of values. > > Relational database systems typically don't provide any > such type, because it's not the recommended way of storing > that kind of data in a relational database. > > The recommended way is to use a secondary table, as has > been pointed out. Most SQL databases allow you to store arbitrary data as an opaque value (i.e. BLOB). So, one possibility would be to just serialize your list (pickle, json, whatever) and store it that way. I've seen databases that didn't use BLOB, but just stored json in a string field. The limitation, of course, is that the data is opaque as far as the database goes; you can't do queries against it. But, if all you need to do is store the list and be able to retrieve it, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and a lot more efficient than doing a join on a secondary table. Normalization is for database weenies :-) -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
