Yeah, I completely agree. I didn't want to put my personal opinion in my
original post because I wanted untainted answers. However, from a
maintenance standpoint, I thought the many smaller, specific tables is much
cleaner and easier to deal with.
Thanks,
Jason
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hayes, David" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "CF-Talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 10:16 AM
Subject: RE: DB structure advice
> I would break it into smaller tables.
>
> One issue is size - you don't want to store a lot of empty fields. Create
> each table, and use a primary key ID field to link them.
>
> Just remember that when you want a record set with all the data, you will
> need to use LEFT JOIN in order for the result set to include the members
who
> don't have records in the optional tables.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jason Lotz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 10:52 AM
> To: CF-Talk
> Subject: DB structure advice
>
>
> This is more of a theory question than an actualy request for help. Let's
> say you are building a database of members with lots of information that
> applies to every member (name, address, phone, etc.) This could be about
40
> seperate fields. Then, on top of that, each member can have lots of
> optional information that can easily be grouped together. For example, if
> they graduated from college, you want to store their degree information or
> if they own a company, you want to store their company info. Each of
these
> "optional groups" are one-to-one (each member can only have one chunk of
> this data but doesn't have to have it at all.) Now here's the question -
>
> When you are building this database, you could easily put it into one huge
> table because all the information is one-to-one. However, it's a pain
when
> you only want to get the "degree" information or the "company"
information.
> From a programming standpoint, is it best to break these into smaller
tables
> for ease of use or to keep it into one table?
>
> Thanks,
> Jason
>
>
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