Re: Hierarchal data

I didn't receive much feedback from this post.  Would psql-general be a
better list to post this question?  Or is there a better place to ask a
general database design question?

Thanks,

On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 05:28:09PM -0800, Bill Moseley wrote:
> I realize this is a classic problem, but I'm a NOVICE after all.
>
> I want to represent hierarchal topics (just like dmoz.org).  I've seen
> two ways to represent the data.  Both are described at
>
>   http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1105/1
>
> And in another article by Joe Celko about using Modified Preorder Trees.
>
> I'm leaning toward using the simpler "adjacency list model" where each
> node (topic) in the tree just lists its parent.
>
>     create table topic (
>         topic_id    serial PRIMARY KEY,
>         name        varchar(64),
>         parent_id   int  -- possible to use "REFERENCES topic" but allow NULL?
>     )
>
>
> The problem becomes then how to find the path from a given node to the
> root node.  I'm working with perl and currently what I'm doing is a
> recursive call to the database.  That's going to be slow if I have to
> look up many of those.
>
> My question is this: is there a way to get Postgresql to do this recursive
> query for me?
>
>
> My other question is how to get from a topics path to a topic node id.  That is,
> can someone suggest a way to find the topic id if you have a path like:
>
>    /top/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Open_Source/
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
>
> --
> Bill Moseley
> moseley@hank.org
>
>
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--
Bill Moseley
moseley@hank.org