StackOverflow2013

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primarykey
Id
4389845
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0
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CreationDate
2010-12-08T16:34:04.177
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2010-12-08T16:39:11.430
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2010-12-08T16:39:11.430
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300257
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300257
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2
Score
3
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text
Body
<blockquote> How should I keep the structure dynamic without having to revisit my standard layout to accommodate new fields of data, or different structure? </blockquote> Basically, you pivot the normal database idea of columns and rows. You have a data name table, which consists of the unique names of the fields of data, and an indicator to tell the import process what type of data is stored, like a date, timestamp, or integer. You have a data table, which contains the data name id, a sequence number, the data field, and a foreign key to identifying information. The sequence number is used to differentiate between different values of the same data name. The data field holds every type of data possible. This would be a VARCHAR(MAX) in most databases. It's up to the upload process to convert dates and numbers to strings. Your data table will have a foreign key to the rest of the information that identifies who the data field belongs to. <blockquote> How do I make them upload data in a way that is incremental? For example they might be uploading an XML version of their data, my upload code should figure out what already exists. </blockquote> The short answer is that you can't. Your upload process has to identify duplicate data and not store it on the database. <blockquote> My final and most important question. Are there better ways of going about this instead of having an upload infrastructure? </blockquote> This is a hard question to answer without knowing more about the type of data you're receiving, but there is software that allows you to load databases without a lot of programming, by defining the input data structure and mapping that structure to your database tables.
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1. PODynamic database structure
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1. USGilbert Le Blanc
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1. USGilbert Le Blanc
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