in reply to Re^2: (OT) Does anyone know of a common object repository?
in thread (OT) Does anyone know of a common object repository?
If I want to know the standard attributes about a car I just retreive the attributes of the car object.
In the late 70's I was an apprentice at a car plant. Every year, each apprentice had to pick and complete a project from a long list of possibilities suggested by any of the 23,000 employees and management on site.
In my 3rd or 4th year, the project I picked -- along with 2 others -- was part of an attempt to utilise the old payroll computer system which had just been replaced, but was still available and working, to aid in the logistics of parts for the production lines. The idea was to encode all the parts onto punch cards and use them to track the inventory as stills (wire crates or pallets) were delivered from suppliers and then again as they were consumed by the production lines.
(Our part was simply to design and construct prototype holders for the punch cards that would be attached to each still when it arrived, and keep it dry and safe until it was empty. We were Mech.Eng. apprentices.)
The were 3 basic car models in production at that time -- the Chevette, the Cavalier and the Ventora/Viscount. But, with body styles available in 3 and 5 door, and 'estate' variants; 3, 4 or 5 different engine options; 3 or 4 different trim levels; different wheels -- size; width; steel or alloy -- mirrors; lights; interior trims; colors -- and thus body colored option extras; ... etc. etc. etc. The machine that had handled the payroll for 23,000 people perfectly well for years, proved totally inadequate for the task. It simply couldn't handle the number of variables involved.
As I recall, each individual vehicle require upwards of 200 punch cards -- each with 80 columns -- to define its unique combination of booleans attributes. Over 16,000 attributes to describe one single type of "object". And I betting today it would be close to double that; cars were much simpler beasts back then.
My point is that I think you are grossly optimistic to believe what you describe is even a possibility.
|
|---|