Stairway to Data, Step 8: Data Encoding Schemes

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Stairway to Data, Step 8: Data Encoding Schemes - Part II

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CELKO

Posted Thursday, May 12, 2011 6:53 AM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Stairway to Data, Step 8: Data Encoding Schemes - Part II

Books in Celko Series for Morgan-Kaufmann Publishing
Analytics and OLAP in SQL
Data and Databases: Concepts in Practice
Data, Measurements and Standards in SQL
SQL for Smarties
SQL Programming Style
SQL Puzzles and Answers
Thinking in Sets
Trees and Hierarchies in SQL

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Andy Warren

Posted Wednesday, August 31, 2011 5:35 AM

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Joe, any history on why they used "9" for the no gender value instead of "3", the next in the sequence?

Andy
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Post #1168020

CELKO

Posted Wednesday, August 31, 2011 8:15 AM

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Nines and zeroes go back to punch cards!

FORTRAN and early COBOL progam read a blank (unpunched) card column as a zero. You could go back and re-punch the card when you knew something.

The columns were locked to alpha, numeric or alphanumeric by the keypunch (there was a control card that shifted the keyboard for you). The keys also did repetition if you held them down. That mean that filling a card field with nines would make them sort to the end of the deck and the bottom of reports.

This is also why we has a lot of people born in '1911-11-11' when we did not know the real birthdate (remember 2-digit years and "mmddyy" dates in COBOL).

Books in Celko Series for Morgan-Kaufmann Publishing
Analytics and OLAP in SQL
Data and Databases: Concepts in Practice
Data, Measurements and Standards in SQL
SQL for Smarties
SQL Programming Style
SQL Puzzles and Answers
Thinking in Sets
Trees and Hierarchies in SQL

Post #1168127

Philipp Post

Posted Friday, November 18, 2011 12:48 PM

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Nice series!

With this:

The translation tables can be downloaded to the workstations in a client/server system to reduce network traffic.

I do have the opposite experience. I have to work with a system which sends data over the internet and has a Java front end on the client PC. That front end downloads ALL these code tables and does it every time something was changed. And there are often changes. It does it no matter if I need the translation data or not, so the traffic finally increased. I would prefer a picker form which the user calls when necessary and which queries just the codes which are needed.

brgds

Philipp Post

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