Top all-time · #20610
Vadim Tropashko
Personal blog · vadimtropashko.wordpress.comdataprogramming
Vadim Tropashko writes Language Chronicle, a personal blog at vadimtropashko.wordpress.com about data and programming. Since 2014, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 4 times. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Vadim Tropashko's blog for SQL design, especially storing trees and graphs in relational databases using nested sets and nested intervals. His free SQL Design Patterns PDF is also cited.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
with occasional database topics
What Hacker News says?
Vadim Tropashko wrote a book "SQL Design Patterns" that, among others, presents non-trivial approaches to storing trees and graphs in SQL databases. I highly recommend it. The PDF version is free here: https://vadimtropashko.wordpress.com/%E2%80%9Csql-design-pat...
Comment linking /%E2%80%9Csql-design-patterns%E2%80%9D-book/about/
on “User-defined Order in SQL”Submitted SQL Design Patterns (2010) as a story · 151 points
HN discussionOne just needs to be aware that nested sets eventually hit a limit. I experimented with a variation by Vadim Tropashko using something called "Farey fractions" [1]. These represent the intervals as a 2x2 matrix of four integers rather than two floating point values. The numbers are effectively limited to 32-bit values in the matrix since a multiplication is required (resulting in 64-bit intermediate results). It was…
Comment linking /%E2%80%9Csql-design-patterns%E2%80%9D-book/
on “Representing Trees in PostgreSQL”I think the nested intervals model, a refinement of nested sets, solves this slow update problem: http://www.rampant-books.com/art_vadim_nested_sets_sql_trees... But I've never had to use it, so I am just guessing. Same article, different site: https://communities.bmc.com/docs/DOC-9902 And a paper: http://www.sigmod.org/publications/sigmod-record/0506/p47-ar... Here's a comparison of the different approaches in a ma…
Comment linking /2008/08/09/one-more-nested-intervals-vs-adjacency-list-comparison/
on “Representing Trees in PostgreSQL”