database. I would also bet that 80% of the people who are actually
writing queries with that many joins don't have a solid grasp of the
fundamental principles of relational database design.
Why not? Normalizing gets you -more- tables, not less.
And normalizing is a goal in itself? I've seen plenty of "normalized"
databases which have become a big mess because of the unnecessarily
complex queries you needed to do a relatively simple job.
No, it's not a goal in itself, that's not what I said.
I didn't say that you said that. You stated that "Normalizing gets
you -more- tables". It wasn't mentioned why you wanted to "normalize" the
database in the first place. To me your statement looked like it said that
"normalizing" a database would be a requirement for any database.
Yes, that's a good thing, unless it's an OLAP database. It improves
data consistency and avoids NULLs in storage, which is good.
This automatically would produce queries with 61+ joins in them.
A lot of the "enterprise level" features can be useful in certain cases,
Normalizing data has nothing to do with "enterprise level", it's a matter
if keeping your data consistent, being able to create proper constraints
at the database, for example.
Normalizing has nothing to do with "enterprise level", but joining complex
views has. Don't ask yourself why you've created the views, just use them
in a join.
So normalize each database because you may want to create constraints in
some situations?
Constraints are a good thing.
This is the behaviour which causes unnecessarily complex databases,
queries and applications.
Unless you don't value your data very much, I consider normalizing,
database constraints etc a "pro", not a "con".
If you ask yourself if normalizing a column in a table is useful and if
you really need the constraint and if the view, stored procedure, function
or whatever you use is really useful, chances are that the application is
a lot simpler, faster and easier to maintain.
With regards,
Martijn Tonies
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com
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