On Fri, 19 Sep 2014 02:02:30 +0100 Simon Slavin <slav...@bigfraud.org> wrote:
> By the way I wanted to warn you about starting any project with first > name, middle name and last name fields. This leads to problems, and > I would go to some lengths to avoid it if possible. It would be > better to provide two columns: > > name (their name, however they want it to be shown) > nameInSortOrder (their name, in whatever order you feel it should be > sorted) I wonder what "problems" you're talking about. Do you think the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the DMV, the passport agency, your birth certificate, and your local bank are just doing it wrong? I've filled out address forms in four languages I can think of, and every one had a place for my first name and last name. I've never seen one that seems like it would present a problem for "Patrick McKenzie". Problems arising from the schema you suggest: 1. select by last name 2. select by first name 3. duplicate detection[1] 4. "however they want" is unknown and idiosyncratic 5. "whatever order" may be more than one If you print a list of "however they want" ordered by "whatever order", the result will look very strange and be hard to use, because the sort order will not be apparent in the listing. The issues raised in the linked page apply mostly to application development. The database's job is to capture the facts. Just get the person's name -- in its discrete parts -- in the database and be done with it. --jkl [1] Yes, I know names aren't unique. Duplicate detection isn't only about rejection; it's also about noticing similarity to avoid, say, assigning a new identifier to the same person. _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@sqlite.org http://sqlite.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
