In a software I use records of measurement data. Each record contains basic information like a name, some parameters and the actual measurement data in the form of three arrays of double values that may vary in length from record to record. I currently use a binary format to save these records.
However I am not entirely happy with this approach, since it makes it hard to maintain (there may be changes or additional information in new versions and so on).
So I was thinking of moving the data into a database like access. This would have advantages for everyone. I can add information as I want, the user can use the database for other purposes if they please, etc.
However I am a complete novice in regards to databases and I wonder how I would structure a database to represent this content, especially the variable arrays.
I thought about encoding the double values into a string (like ; separated base64 strings) but this seems like a dirty hack that’s not very user friendly.
So my questions are:
- Is a database like Access suitable for my type of application.
- There are no “array”-fields in an Access database, right?
- How is storing a variable amount of data in a database entry usually handled?
- Can I link one Access-Table to an entry in another table? So I would create a Data-table with entries for each datapoint and link this to a specific record in my main table?
I hope I could make myself clear somehow, but it’s hard to wrap my head around the concepts. If you need more information, please ask. Thank you.
An array in access (or any other relational database) is simply another table.
Table 1
ArrayID AutoNumber
Table 2
ArrayItemID AutoNumber
ArrayID Number (Foreign Key, in one-to-many relationship with ArrayID in Table1)
Value Number
1