Spectra uses something like your objects approach.
There are some serious pros and cons. . .
At 02:25 PM 5/08/00 -0400, you wrote:
>I am beginning work on a suite of small projects, which all feed off of a
>central database. I have an idea rolling around in my mind as to the DB
>design, but am not sure whether to go ahead with it. I'm trying to stay away
>from zillions of small tables, each representing something different, so
>here's what I came up with:
>
>Break everything down into "objects". Every user is an object. Every message
>board is an object. Every message on a board is an object. These can all be
>stored together in one table.
>
>Every object has a "type", such as USER, MESSAGEBOARD, MESSAGE, etc. These
>too can be stored in one table.
>
>Every type of object has a list of attributes available to it. This table
>would show that an object of type USER has attributes FIRSTNAME, LASTNAME,
>PASSWORD, etc.
>
>The last table contains the actual data for the attributes defined above. It
>shows that a particular user's LastName is 'Smith'. The next record in this
>table could specify that a particular message was written at 11:30 PM.
>
>Now the question: Am I insane? Has anyone tried something like this before?
>It is definitely an experiment in DB normalization, but I don't want to work
>on it for 3 weeks, then find myself swamped.
>
>Hopefully this makes sense. Any foresight you may have would definitely be
>appreciated.
>
>Norman Elton
>Information Technology
>College of William & Mary
>
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