August 2, 2008Working With Recursive Data Part II: Tree Traversal
In the first post in this series on working with recursive data I talked about several different ways to store the information in a database. Some of them were promising, but they all had complications of some kind or another. I was using the phpBB Doctor Project Manager database design as an example, but there are quite a few different scenarios where recursive data will be found. Since SQL is not a recursive language, I am trying to find the best way to model the data so that I can access it with minimal fuss.
As an example, in my project management system I need to be able to quickly and easily identify the parent task, if the task has any sub-tasks (child records), and which tasks are at the same level (siblings). I would like to be able to traverse the tree in either direction (up to the parent or down to the child) without using recursion. In order to do that, I need a model that is different from anything presented in the prior post.
Comments (4)