On Sep 15, 11:20 pm, Steve Kass <sk...@drew.edu> wrote:
> James,
>
> I don't think you need a cursor for this. If you create a
.. . . [ nice example using a number table deleted.]

I like what you're suggesting, but one detail that I thought would be
easy seems not to be. For each binary piece, my parsing function needs
to return three fields, of different datatypes.

When I first asked this question, I thought I could do something like
select * from my_parser_fn(select b from Binaries).

I could divide the parser into three copies, one for each field, but
they are inter-related, and I would like to keep that code in one
place.

This looks like another pointer towards a cursor. I can be proud
though, that in a year of part time SQL work, this will be my first
cursor. And I have a procedural language background, too. What will
happen once I fall off the wagon?

(Another complication that I discovered on some test runs and
inspections. Not all of the binary parts are really the same length. I
can get around this without much difficulty, I just need to parse some
headers a little more closely for each binary thing.)


Thanks again all for the ...
James Fraser