On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Heikki Linnakangas
<heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com> wrote:
> Also, it would be nice to generalize the thing so that it works not only
> with intervals of time, but also floats, integers, numerics etc. The concept
> of an interval is not really tied to timestamps, even though that's probably
> the most common use case in the business world.
Suddenly this thread has my undivided attention.
A does-not-overlap operator would be awesome. A does-not-overlap
index on a column whose value is a range would be awesome beyond
words.
As a simple example, consider an application whose job is to allocate
subnets out of some larger IP block. Today, I typically handle cases
of this type by defining triggers that generate the ends of the range
and all the intermediate values and insert them into a side table with
a unique index. It's really the pits, and unworkable for large
ranges.
...Robert