Recursive Data Structure - HOW TO or Have TO

[imoree]

Hello everyone;

i have been searching this forum and have come across a few of what i am facing now Issues! They have to do with manufacturing and database design.

Heard a few talks about recursive structure, but i have been unable to figure out what that means in its entirety via Google and books that i know where to look.

Can someone please describe or provide links where to find more information/articles in relation to recursive data structures and possible manufacturing db models?

TIA:

-i

[bruceR]

You will probably won't get useful responses until you state your application more specifically.

You may be right that you need a recursive structure; but what exactly do you think you need to model recursively?

That said, if you want to get some serious books on data modeling then I suggest something like "The Data Modeling Reource Book, Vol 3" by Silverston and Agnew.

[Vaughan]

Recursive functions are kind-of like looping scripts: it's a feature that allows the function to keep processing the data or expression until it recognises it's done the job.

A simple example is a function to reverse the order of text:

Reverse( "the order of the text" ) = "txet eht fo redo eht"

A way to do this recursively is to:

start at the right-most character

add this character to the left of a new string

add the previous character to the new string

keep going until the left-most character s reached

return the new string

The recursive nature makes it easy to program, and solves the "I have no way of knowing how long the text input will be" problem because it keeps calling itself and processing until it's all done.

Check this out, by Queue:

http://www.briandunning.com/cf/160

It's pretty minimal.

Look for the step where the function calls itself: that's the recursion. Also look for the bit where the function checks whether it's finished the processing and returns the result. In this function it's hard to see, because it's the OTHER part of the case function that isn't there. Generally recursive functions have something like

Case(

check whether the work is done ;

Function( remaining work ) ;

return result

)

There is a 50,000 recursion limit with FMP (a bit less with FM Go) so clever programming is often needed to prevent the limit from being reached.

[Rick Whitelaw]

My understanding of a recursive process . . . Let's call it function, is a function that calls itself. Sounds simple but is not necessarily so.

[imoree]

I was talking of recursive data structures & thank you BCooney for pointing out to just contact Jonathan Stark.

Here is the article;

http://jonathanstark.com/fm/recursive-data-structures.php