Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!haven!vrdxhq!daitc!daitc.daitc.mil
From: jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (Jonathan Krueger)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Ingres is making me mad!!
Summary: Don't worry be happy
Message-ID: <349@daitc.daitc.mil>
Date: 23 Feb 89 01:14:07 GMT
References: <1949@tank.uchicago.edu>
Sender: jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil
Reply-To: jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (Jonathan Krueger)
Organization: Defense Applied Information Technology Center
Lines: 40
In-reply-to: dwayne@rover.bsd.uchicago.edu

In article <1949@tank.uchicago.edu>, dwayne@rover writes:
>[he has] a questionairre 80% of which are y/n/u questions
>[the rest] is floating point and character data types.
>
>Well, I hit that legendary boundary of 127 columns in a table
>does anybody have any ideas that might help me get around
>this (I think undocumented) limitation [without breaking into tables]???

It's documented in 4 places I know of: QUEL and SQL ref manual, UNIX
and VMS Database Administrator's Guide.  Forms limits are documented
in Addendum C to Release 5.0:
	 127 cols per table field
	4000 chars form width
	 150 chars trim length
	  50 field title length
Number of components on a form (trim plus simple fields plus table
fields) is unlimited.

Workaround: change design from
	person(id, age, weight, socksize, symp1, symp2, symp3 . . .)
to
	person(id, age, weight, socksize)
	symptom(id, symptom)

Modify data entry to choose symptoms from a tablefield.  Place most
common symptoms at top of tablefield.

Good pts: makes it easy to query through forms who has anxiety OR
sweating OR nightmares.

Bad pts: loses distinction between no and unknown.  If distinction
makes no difference in the real world, this is fine.  Otherwise must
change design, say to
	person(id, age, weight, socksize)
	present(id, symptom)
	absent(id, symptom)


-- Jon
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