Re: Beyond the 1600 columns limit on windows - Mailing list pgsql-general

From merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
Subject Re: Beyond the 1600 columns limit on windows
Date
Msg-id 867jbjgtcw.fsf@blue.stonehenge.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Beyond the 1600 columns limit on windows  ("Evandro's mailing lists (Please, don't send personal messages to this address)" <listasjr@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: Beyond the 1600 columns limit on windows
List pgsql-general
>>>>> "Evandro's" == Evandro's mailing lists (Please, don't send personal messages to this address)
<listasjr@gmail.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@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
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