On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 06:24 -1000, Thomas S. Dye wrote:

> Most of my projects store data in a MySQL database.  My projects  
> define queries that relate tables to one another, but the results
> are  
> typically something that Org-mode understands---a flat table or a  
> single value.  The reproducible research functions that I write
> break  
> the analysis workflow down into separate tasks so that the results
> of  
> a SQL query are written to the Org-mode buffer.  Subsequent steps in  
> the workflow refer to the named results block.  This way, the
> Org-mode  
> project contains the actual data used in the analysis without the
> need  
> to reproduce a relational structure.  The functions that access the  
> SQL database go in the local library of babel because I don't want
> to  
> give users of a RR document direct access to my database.
> 


That is very interesting. I like the idea of separating the database
queries from the flat table results. This is similar to my situation.
The actual storage of the data is relational, but the queries needed to
assess the data result in either flat tables or single values. Very good
idea.