Received: from maia.hub.org (maia-5.hub.org [200.46.204.29]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 64CB2632D2A for ; Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:30:59 -0300 (ADT) Received: from mail.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.86]) by maia.hub.org (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.29]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 98348-07 for ; Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:30:52 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from joeconway.com (wsip-72-214-29-243.sd.sd.cox.net [72.214.29.243]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F0C51632CDB for ; Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:30:51 -0300 (ADT) Received: from [72.214.29.243] (account jconway HELO jec-macbook-pro.local) by joeconway.com (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 4.1.8) with ESMTP-TLS id 9920014; Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:30:48 -0700 Message-ID: <4C4212F8.1080704@joeconway.com> Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:30:48 -0700 From: Joseph Conway User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.10) Gecko/20100512 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Thom Brown CC: Dave Page , Steve Atkins , pgsql-docs Subject: Re: Railroad diagrams, a-la sqlite References: <2AACFC47-C121-4549-B015-AC4FCA9380CE@blighty.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.981 tagged_above=-5 required=5 tests=BAYES_20=-0.001, RDNS_DYNAMIC=0.982 X-Spam-Level: X-Archive-Number: 201007/121 X-Sequence-Number: 5777 On 7/17/10 1:26 PM, Thom Brown wrote: > On 17 July 2010 21:23, Dave Page wrote: >> On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Thom Brown wrote: >>> While they're quite attractive, I actually see them being more >>> confusing than helpful personally, but I could be wrong. I reckon >>> there might be clearer ways of representing statement options. The >>> real problems with the railroad design come when there are lots of >>> references to other diagrams, and you end up with about 10 just for 1 >>> statement. >>> >>> Is there a way of testing their usefulness? >> >> Personal experience? I used to find them quite useful when I was >> starting out with Informix. >> > > I guess I'm quite used to the existing statement definitions. It's an > elegant idea, just wondering if it scales sanely. Are the examples of > more complex statements? Oracle SELECT: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14117_01/server.101/b10759/statements_10002.htm Joe -- Joe Conway credativ LLC: http://www.credativ.us Linux, PostgreSQL, and general Open Source Training, Service, Consulting, & 24x7 Support