Best Data Structure/file to store Matrix to read in Ruby on Rails? jSon? Yaml? Xml?

Question

I am choosing an optimal data file/source/database to store a matrix, originally from spreadsheet. The current spreadsheet matrix looks like below:

    A1 A2 A3 A4
B1  1  2  3  4
B2  3  2  3  4
B3  2  3  1  3

My objective is to easily retrieve data from the matrix. The column and row headings act as pointer to the actual data in the matrix.

I am considering json, yaml...but it is so much work to produce hashes with two pointers to every number in the matrix..

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If you only need to store it and do nothing else about it, I would even go as far as use CSV saved inside a text field, nothing is as simple as that. If you do need to perform certain operations with the matrix, I would suggest trying to use something like postgres hstore: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/hstore.html and trying to build data representation based on that.