Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Stuck on database design

The database can search through the arbitrary text about different economic time series, and select plots I like. But there is still have no formal method to put up labels and titles, no clear way to decode a time series id into the appropriate presentation text, except for the odd snippets of text the user used to acquire the id. Decode from ID to plotting text, needs to be more formal. Perhaps take the simple rout and assume there is a decoder somewhere created by the original generator of the economic series.
So ther exists a decode of the series ID that generates formal presentation text. BLS produces them, and I have implemented many in a decode query. But, I need the canonical form of series id that I understand and can use, my own. Then any more will just be a query on the proper virtual table.

So, in the end, the user can throw a table of text into the searchable table, identified by a distinct name. The the database can recover it as needed for title,subtitle and labels; from a decode of a serial data id. Then throw in the data itself. Clicking on a series ID shows up as a quick plot, complete with labels.

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