[Babase] ranking clarification needed

Karl O. Pinc kop at meme.com
Sun Sep 2 19:14:09 EDT 2007


On 09/02/2007 07:58:16 AM, Susan Alberts wrote:
> Hi Jun,
> 
> 
>> 1. Given a month, a group, and a ranktype, there is just one ranking.
> 
> Yes this is correct. In the RANKS table in babase, each "rank" refers  
> to exactly one month, group and ranktype.
> 
>> In particular, we never produce a ranking that "spans" multiple
>> months. This assumption is reflected by the current design of the
>> RANKS table.
> 
> We never produce rankings in the ranks file that span multiple  
> months. However, we do sometimes want to produce matrices that span  
> multiple months.

In theory, if you wanted to store a rank for multiple months in the
RANKS table you could do it just by defining another RNKTYPES row
and have that be defined as "for the previous N months".  So,
the _minimum_ granularity is 1 month.  It'd probably be a hassle
to query the "multiple months" rank types because there's
no function like rnkdate() to make joins to the rnkdate easy.

So, while it's not done, there's nothing inherent in the design
that says it couldn't be.

Karl <kop at meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                  -- Robert A. Heinlein



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