Getting Your Data into Shape

Abstract

no, this chapter is not about thinning the fat rows out of your cursors—which might not be a bad idea. It is about using the ADO Shape syntax to manage hierarchical data. But what is “hierarchical” data? Most of us work with hierarchical data most of the time without knowing it. For instance, when you work with a Customers table that is tied to an associated Invoices table, which has an associated Items table, that’s a hierarchy. The difference between a normal query and a hierarchical query is that the relationships are embedded in the hierarchy. That is, the schema of the relationship is part of the hierarchical structure. This way, the tool used to reference the data “knows” that there can be from zero to n orders for each customer and the Order table’s CustID should point back to a valid row in the Customers table.