ewu (neurite@excite.com) writes:
> I got a chance to peak into a database system. Part of its design is
> rather unfamiliar to me. When I look at the diagram generated by SQL
> Server, there are many floating tables. Eventually it turns out that
> these many floating tables are actually not floating. Their table
> names relate to fields (as TableID) in other tables. In this case,
> you can get a handle to one of such tables by search TableID columns
> in other tables.
>
> To be more specific, the database is a microarray database implemented
> in SQL Server 2000. They have a table called MICROARRAYS. In this
> table, there is a column called table_id. These table_ids are in fact
> table names of a bunch of other tables.

I'm not sure that I understand this. I'm not even sure that I want to
understand it.

It certainly does not seem like a regular use of a relational database
engine, and while it work with smaller amount of data, I doubt that
this system hosts 100 GB of data. Or even 1 GB.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, sommar@algonet.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp