[Babase] lymphstates
Susan Alberts
alberts at duke.edu
Wed Jul 21 09:32:56 EDT 2010
My only comment on this is that if the column is numeric but coded as
a character it can be very confusing to query because it won't be
natural or obvious that you need to query as a character, so I at any
rate would often end up writing a query with this statement
Select * from lymphstates
where state = 1
Instead of
where state = '1'
Then I get an error and would have to bang my head a bit to figure out
what I had done wrong–no one will be using this table enough for it
to be in their head all the time. I can see this being a problem. For
this reason, if it's numeric it should be coded as numeric and if
it's a character it would be better to have it as a letter. Does this
make sense? I'm okay with either.
Susan
On Jul 20, 2010, at 12:59 PM, Karl O. Pinc wrote:
> On 07/20/2010 10:23:27 AM, Lacey Maryott Roerish wrote:
>> Karl
>>
>> I am getting ready to populate the lymphstates table and realized you
>> have
>> it set as Character(1). How much would it change about what you have
>> already done if this were Numeric (1) instead? I had it set up as
>> 1-4
>> (or
>> 0-3 if that is more logical)..
>
> I can change it if you like but there's nothing wrong with
> using the digits 1 to 4 in a character(1) column. The
> only difference is that you can add numeric columns and
> get averages and such. I'd only want it to change to
> numeric if the column really is supposed to contain
> some kind of metric.
>
>
>
> Karl <kop at meme.com>
> Free Software: "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
> -- Robert A. Heinlein
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Babase mailing list
> Babase at www.eco.princeton.edu
> http://www.eco.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/babase
--------------------------------------------------------
Susan Alberts, Dept of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham NC
27708, 919-660-7272 (Ph), 919-660-7293 (Fax)
More information about the Babase
mailing list