Subject: <<<< UPDATING ARRAYS >>>>

From: Otago University Database Research Group <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 92 19:02:16 -0700

With regards to attributes of type array e.g text[100], is it possible once
values have already been entered and saved to then update this list with extra
elements. For example if text[1] and text[2] contain values that have been
inserted using
               append <rname>(textattr="{"Fred","Sam"}")
it would be convenient to be able to add to this list using
               append <rname>(textattr[3] = "{"Andrew"}")
this obviously isn't supported as it doesn't work. Is there any other way I acn
go about updating an array?

One other question : Sets as attributes are not supported - would this not be a
simple to define user type or are there hidden complexities involved?

Thanks for your help,
Andrew White
        [email-masked]

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 92 19:25:50 PDT

In message <[email-masked]> you write:
> elements.

no, what you propose doesn't work in version 4.0.  we hope to add this
sometime.

> One other question : Sets as attributes are not supported - would this not be
> a simple to define user type or are there hidden complexities involved?

there are semantic issues involved.  for example, you'd like to be able
to express, in the query language, a query that ran some function on each
of the values in a set.  that can't be supported without some extensions
to the postgres executor.  a graduate student here is looking into adding
support for sets as first-class objects in version 4.1.

					mike