Design help

["Carroll, Andrew" <andrew.carroll@okstate.edu>]

I am trying to design (what I guess is) a database table adapter.  Yes,
it is a master's course assignment.  The current design is to use a file
and have one record per line.  My goal is to get each line to be
"serialized" so I can read the whole line in bytes and then take chunks
of it and "cast" those into objects.

On this list from a previous poster I found:

   type Byte is range 0..255;
   for Byte'Size use 8;
   package Byte_IO is new Sequential_IO(Byte);

Does that mean I could define the record like:

   type dbrecord is range 0..sum_of_sizes_of_attributes;
   for dbrecord'size use sum_of_sizes_of_attributes;
   package DBRecord_IO is new Sequential_IO(dbrecord);

My next big question....

If I had
   myrec: dbrecord;
   ...
   Dbrecord := <some data>...
   ...

   X := dbrecord(33..70);  --what type is x here?
   attribute := cast(X);  --how do I cast x to an 'class?


Am I making any sense?


Andrew Carroll
Software Services
405-744-4943
andrew.carroll@okstate.edu