[elephant-devel] Re: Derived Indicies

[Alex Mizrahi]

 IE> (defpclass user ()
 IE>    ((name :accessor name)
 IE>     (index :accessor index :associate (message user))))

 IE> (setf charlie (make-instance 'user))

 IE> (defpclass message ()
 IE>    ((user :accessor user :associate user)))

 IE> (make-instance 'message charlie)
 IE> (make-instance 'message charlie)

 IE> (inbox charlie) => returns two messages with charlie in the user slot
...
 IE> The derived index hack is still more efficient for large sets.
 IE> Without changes to the data stores to create an efficient way of
 IE> sorting concatenated values, I don't see a way to improve on it easily.

but if we'll add that tuple sorting, will it be possible to make a nice 
front-end interface to it?
maybe something like:

 (defpclass user ()
    ((name :accessor name)
     (inbox :accessor index :associate (message user) :sort-by 
'creation-time))

(get-by-range user 'inbox yesterday nil)

?