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2009-03-30T16:53:50.177
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Though I'm not a huge fan of this implementation, we have some software that essentially does this for some calling lists. Essentially, here's what they do: <ol> <li>A table with column definitions - call it tblColumnDefs. This table contains columns like "Name", "Type", "Length" and "Description"</li> <li>An instance master table (tblPacketNames). Essentially, just "PacketTypeID", "PacketName", and "Description" for each packet type you're defining</li> <li>An instance definition table (for you, this would be tblPacketColumns). This table collects the pre-defined columns together to form the data structure that you're storing. For example, it might hold "PacketTypeID", "ColumnNumber", "ColumnID". In database-normalization-speak, this is a many-to-many table, since it maps the columns to the packets that use them.</li> <li>In a second database (because of dynamic SQL/injection implications of this step), tables are created dynamically to hold the actual data. For example, if you've defined (in steps 2/3) a packet type called "PING", you might have a table called "PING" in your database to hold that data. You'd use tblPacketColumns, linked to tblColumnDefs, to figure out what field types to create and how big they should be. You end up with a collection of tables that match the packet type definitions from step 3, using the columns from step 1.</li> </ol> NOTE: I don't particular like the SQL-injection implications of step 4. Creating tables dynamically can lead to some consequences if security isn't designed properly and the input from any user-entered fields in your application isn't cleansed properly, especially if this application has an interface that available to untrusted callers (ie, the Internet). Using this, you can create indexes however you want when the tables are created (maybe you have a column in step 1 where you flag certain columns as "Indexable", and indexes are created on top of them when the tables are created.
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1. POStoring data packets in a database
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1. USSqlRyan
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