I have lots of data where one record conceptually matches a table rather than a row. My (overall) question is: How do I best deal with this? Possible sub-questions are: Are there RDBMS databases that deal with tables of data rather than rows? If not, are OOBDMS or R/O hybrids my solution? If not to both, does anyone know of any web pages with information on how to create 2 dimension databases that manipulate 3 dimension data (a different wording of essentially the same problem). If not to all the above, can anyone convince me of a better solution than maintaining a spreadsheet for each record? :-)

Cheers
mcalex

do a google search for database normalization

that's the best way to deal with it

there has never been a data structure that a fully normalized database couldn't handle

yes, in oracle you can store a table inside a single row/column cell

thinking about that, and the sql required to manage it, gives me a big headache, but if you like that sort of complexity, then go get yourself an oracle license and go to town

ahhh, so ok, stick with Excel.

It's that sql nightmare that I was looking to avoid. I know you can normalise any data structure, I just didn't think that a spreadsheet proggy would do this easier than a database.

thx for helping

mcalex