Re: Beyond the 1600 columns limit on windows

From: merlyn(at)stonehenge(dot)com (Randal L(dot) Schwartz)
To: "Evandro's mailing lists (Please, don't send personal messages to this address)" <listasjr(at)gmail(dot)com>
Cc: pgsql-general <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Beyond the 1600 columns limit on windows
Date: 2005-11-08 13:30:07
Message-ID: 867jbjgtcw.fsf@blue.stonehenge.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-general

>>>>> "Evandro's" == Evandro's mailing lists (Please, don't send personal messages to this address) <listasjr(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:

[I would have replied to your personal address, but I'm not about
to copy it from a footer.]

Evandro's> I'm doing a PhD in data mining and I need more than 1600 columns. I got an
Evandro's> error message saying that I can not use more than 1600 columns.
Evandro's> It is happening because I have to change categorical values to binary
Evandro's> creating new columns. Do you know if oracle can handle it?

/me boggles

You are doing a PhD in data mining, and you have a table that needs
more than 1600 columns?

/me gasps

What are they *teaching* these days?

If you have a design that has more than 20 or so columns, you're
probably already not normalizing properly. There just aren't *that*
many attributes of a object before you should start factoring parts of
it out, even if it means creating some 1-1 tables.

In programming, if I ever see someone name a sequence of variables,
like "thing1" and "thing2", I know there's going to be trouble ahead,
because that should have been a different data structure. Similarly,
I bet some of your columns are "foo1" and "foo2". Signs of brokenness
in the design.

Or do you really have 1600 *different* attributes, none of which have
a number in their name? That requires a serious amount of
creativity. :)

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn(at)stonehenge(dot)com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

In response to

Responses

Browse pgsql-general by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Alex Stapleton 2005-11-08 13:31:32 Re: Beyond the 1600 columns limit on windows
Previous Message Michael Glaesemann 2005-11-08 13:29:54 Re: database export problem