comment on

punkish>> A typical search would be to retrieve all the values 
punkish>> of  for  or <for a set of points> 
punkish>> <for a particular year+yday combination>.

dws> If those are the typical search patterns,

Those are typical search patterns. There are a few other search patterns as well, so I have to find a format that can accommodate *all* of them.

dws> is a relational database the right hammer to reach for?

Dunno. Hence this thread.

dws> Why not flat files?

Well, the data are already in some kind of flat files. Actually, they are in files, but not flat files. They are in NetCDF format. The format is very compact, and very suitable for storing array of arrays, however, it is not very amenable to spatial searches. Hence, my desire to put the data in a database.

As shown in my original post, the db table is very simple, almost like a flat file (with a little overhead per "line" added by the db). However, it allows me to JOIN this simple table with a location table. I can do a spatial search on the location table, retrieve the value of points that fall within my search, and then retrieve the variables from this simple but mongo table.

--

when small people start casting long shadows, it is time to go to bed

In reply to Re^2: Strategy for managing a very large database with Perl by punkish
in thread Strategy for managing a very large database with Perl by punkish

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