Re: Tagging rows into collections?

On Wednesday 19 Jun 2002 10:19 pm, Tom Lane wrote:
> Steve Wampler <swampler(at)noao(dot)edu> writes:
> > An event has: timestamp,event_name,list_of_attributes
> > The list_of_attributes are simple (string) name,value pairs.
> >
> > However, although selection performance isn't a priority, the
> > ability to reconstruct the events from the database is needed
> > and the above simple table doesn't provide enough information
> > to do so. (The resolution on the timestamp field isn't
> > enough to distinquish separate events that have the same name.)
>
> What PG version are you using? In 7.2 the default timestamp resolution
> is microseconds, rather than seconds. That might be enough to fix your
> problem.

Still doesn't *guarantee* uniqueness though, just makes it less likely.

> If not, your two-table approach sounds reasonable. You could stick
> with one table and use arrays for the name/value columns, but that
> will make searches harder.

How about using a sequence to generate unique numbers for you? Looks like a
SERIAL type won't be much use, but a sequence can used without tying it to a
field.

One thing to be careful of - if you have multiple clients inserting then the
numbers won't necessarily be in order. That is, client 1 might insert
10,11,12,13 and client 2 20,21,22,23 but in time-order they might be
10,11,20,12,22,23,13. This is because each client will get a batch of numbers
to use (for efficiency reasons). Be aware that I'm not 100% certain on that
last sentence.

- Richard Huxton