[plug] Re: [OT] SQL column splitting

[James Devenish]

In message <20041116005028.GI19926 at localhost>
on Tue, Nov 16, 2004 at 08:50:29AM +0800, PEter Crystal wrote:
> of course, if the data is presented in just columns of data
> in a text file perl could handle it relatively easy.

Sure :) I guess you and Bret wanted to highlight the obviousness of such
an approach. The problem for me is that this is part of a larger set of
systems that have been built up over time (and I was also hoping for a
solution that would not involve perturbation of the existing tables or
applications). If I really wanted to get this done by any means, I could
do a query using PHP, transmit the information via RPC to a remote
server running an ADA programme which would do the processing in EBCDIC
and transmit the results back to me by carrier pigeon for manual data
entry into the RDBMS to complete the remaining joins. But that's a very
oblique way of performing one particular query that's nested within an
interactive application. I was imagining it would instead be possible
with some well-known SQL motifs. At this stage, I'm predicting the
solution will be implemented in humans rather than machines.