note naikonta You don't have to bet on something clearly stated. Everyone else who read my motivation in OP won't bet against you :-) <p>Anyway, accessing deeply nested data is not the problem, neither is avoiding autovivification. I designed the data structure the way it was. I learn from the experience that structuring my database right would make me programming better. <p>But I see some point in your statement, and I agree with that. That's why I put the code accessing the data directly in a method (<c>somefunc()</c> in my example). And I have other methods doing this, accessing different branch from the same tree. They all check carefully to avoid autovivification to avoid larger problem for the next check. <p>Only those methods (in one class) need to access the data directly so client modules don't need to know the detail. The latter accomplish their tasks based on higher abstraction. <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-607636"> <hr size="1" noshade="1"> <p align="right"><small> <i>Open source softwares? Share and enjoy. Make profit from them if you can. Yet, share and enjoy!</i></small></p> </div></div> 664688 664912