From: Warren Young
Date: December 22 2006 2:03pm
Subject: Re: handling medium text in sql_create statement?
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gary clark wrote:
> 
> i.e L=76 , L being the raw data and 76 being the
> equivalent? 

I see...you are trying to pack smaller data items into a string.  Okay, 
understand, this is generally bad style.  If you need a 1-byte column, 
you should usually create a 1-byte column.  If you have a variable 
number of values, you just need another table, keyed to the first.

Just as an example, consider a business that has a Customer table, but 
they decide that customers need multiple addresses.  Instead of just 
adding more address columns or trying to pack multiple addresses into 
the existing structure, they correctly create the CustomerAddress table, 
keyed on the ID column from the Customer table.  This lets them have as 
many addresses as they need, without trickery.

If you can't normalize the data this way for some reason, give Chris 
Frey's packarray patch a look.  It's in the mailing list archives.  It's 
mainly waiting for a little user love before it can be included in the 
library.