Is it possible to store pointers in a database ?

[brcain]

The big questions are why you want to do this and how you would use it.

In games it takes significant time to build scene graph information -- espeically for transitions from one area/chapter of the game to another. If able to simply load portions of the database pre-constructed, then it would provide seamless (i.e. natural, smooth, continuous) transitions.

[brcain]

It would eliminate the time needed to re-build the constructed database; it's not just an issue of allocation as I incorrectly stated.

[Brandybuck]

In the case of games you don't want to be marshalling/demarshalling pointers, it's not gaining you anything. If your performance is based on tangled web of pointers, time to redesign. You would do better to restructure your data so it can be loaded faster and use a thread to preload neighboring scenes in the background.

Besides, games are special cases that should never be used as case studies for good programming practice :-)

[brcain]

No offense Brandybuck ... but, you're way off here.

Your statement has a certain emotional appeal. But, I think it misses the intent of my response. I wasn't promoting this as an industry best-practice for general programming ... rather trying to provide an answer to a question by Probine.

Obviously, this thread has gotten way off topic. But, I had to repsond one last time.

Cheers,
Ben