VECTOR MANAGEMENT IN RELATIONAL DATABASES?

Are there *any* facilities/data types in typical RDBMS which allow storage of vectors/lists/arrays/time series of numbers???? The only way I'm aware of storing ordered series of numbers is to: 1) store the number and its index explicitly CREATE TABLE series (indx NUMBER (2,0), num NUMBER (4,2)) or 2) shove all the numbers into a BLOB or huge character array and have the application code be responsible for a) knowing how the data is arranged and b) pulling out the desired values. (that is, the application code is where the querys are executed, as SQL knows nothing about the arrangement of the data) Our goal is to find some representation, more space-efficient than 1) and more user friendly than 2), whereby a whole series of values can be shoved into the DB, and SQL provides a nice way of accessing values randomly within the series (e.g., give me the nth element). Any ideas? Do you know something I don't?! Please respond via e-mail to: marra@cadswes.colorado.edu Thanks, carol