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Common
Ground format
I wanted to create a single format for all digital
information. What evolved was an augmented Comma Separated Values (CSV)
file. 5 features were added to the CSV:
- Tag each line, so multiple tables can be stores in
1 file
- Define the original name and format of the fields
- One Level of Sub-Structure to a field
- Dimensions
- Hierarchical Sectioning
Databases in the future will need to implement these
basic additions to be able to handle the needs of complex database
structures.
Dimensions
Allow a cell to contain any number of
values. A field can contain 0 or more values, this is done by the
first value is the number of values to follow.
format: Children:(20):A64,
allow 0 to 20 values
...,3,'Mary','John','Sue',...
Define the original name and format
of the fields
Give the original name and format of each
field. Binary data is stored in 3 common forms, Integer, Real Numbers
and Character, so the basic information about a field is Name:fmt...
where name is the original name and fmt is the original
format for the value. All values in this file are character so the fmt
simply helps the target system re-structure the information.
One level of Sub-Structure to a
Field
A sub-structure is simply a qualified
field description. uses ":" to separate
DATE_OF_BIRTH (Month, Day, year).
...,Jan:23:2001,...
Referenced to as DATE_OF_BIRTH or
DATE_OF_BIRTH.MONTH, DATE_OF_BIRTH.DAY, DATE_OF_BIRTH.YEAR.
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