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eftychia: Me in poufy shirt, kilt, and Darth Vader mask, playing a bouzouki (vader)
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Recurring Theme: Whining That My Hardware Is Not Like The Stuff In Science Fiction (Yet)

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 06:29pm on 2006-11-17 under

Like most people*, I use spreadsheets to store flat-file databases, and like some other folks I sometimes abuse spreadsheets to store relational databases (that's what vlookup() and hlookup() are there for, right?).

But more and more often, I find myself contemplating data sets that really want to be arranged in a three- or four-dimensional matrix.

Hmm ... cheap 3-D glasses from the issue of TV Guide that came out before the 3-D episode of Medium last season, colour monitor, C compiler ... can my to-do list take the addition of a project like that without exploding?**

*Okay, maybe I'm projecting a little. Or extrapolating from a moderately geeky sample population. But maybe not.

**Yeah, I'll STFW to see whether anyone has put together a tool that a) I like the UI of, b) runs on the hardware I've got, and c) is shareware, open source, or cheap. Ugol's law tells me other people need such a tool as well.

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There are 3 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] ladykathryn.livejournal.com at 12:22am on 2006-11-18
Oracle spatial.

I dunno if the lite versions run it though. That's some serious processing power you're talking about,there...
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] madbodger.livejournal.com at 03:34am on 2006-11-18
I take it you remember the 3-D graphics stuff I whomped up on the Atari 800?
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] garnet-rattler.livejournal.com at 01:13am on 2006-11-20
If the data set is large enough to warrant it, Sparse Matrix theory should allow you to set up an ~N-dimensional mechanism with semi-reasonable amounts of coding pain. I've been meaning to write something along that line for a long time and never quite gotten around to more than nibbling at the edges of the problem. Since I only have two or three substantial data sets to put into it, I've been ~lazy and kept the indexes in my head. It definitely limits sharing and expanding them.

If you or [livejournal.com profile] madbodger find anything that even is a start or an approximation of the full deal, please let me know. And iff it's open source, maybe I/we can help?

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