On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 11:17 AM, Stephens, Owen
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> To start, get a report from your ILS with this info in it, sorted by
> Call Number. To populate the table, import your data (sorted in Call
> Number order). The Database ID will be created on import, automatically
> in call number order (there are other, almost certainly better, ways of
> handling this, but this is simple I think)

The trick here comes, of course, when you want to add a book to the
middle of your database without re-generating the entire index -- that
operation may be expensive.

Sorting a list of call numbers is pretty easy; doing it efficiently
for large datasets is rather more tricky. I'm not totally sure, but
the best course of action may be to transform the call numbers into
something indexable (say, a string) that follows the same ordering
rules as your call numbers.

Then, compute the transformation of all your call numbers and drop an
ordinary index on the field.

-Nate