Re: Measure Theoretic Data Types in Postgresql

On 10/12/12 12:48 AM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> 
> So, I think the current range types already cover that use case pretty
> well. I can't imagine how the proposed measure theoretic concepts would
> make that simpler. Can you give some more complicated problem, perhaps,
> that the proposed measure theoretic concepts would make simpler than the
> current tools?

Well, the nice thing about EXTENSIONs is that, if he builds it, people
can just try it out and see if it's useful.  I suspect that the use
cases are rarified enough that this would always be an EXTENSION and not
core.

One thing I could use, for example, would be a time-keyed array, in the
form:

metrics_series ( '2012-10-17 45:22:10',10,
'1 second',15.0,15.1,16.2,NULL,15.8, 14.9, 15.1,14.2, 13.9, NULL )

WHich would allow me to do:

SELECT metric WHERE ts = '2012-10-17 45:22:14'

Without storing a timestamp with each element.

This is not a set of functionality I would expect to be generally useful
and belong in Core.  But for a certain set of analytics applications, it
would be indispensible.

I expect that theoretic data types are the same way.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com