> From: Saira Somani [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>
>
> Is there such thing as an over-normalized database design?
Sure. But usually that would be in the case of doing olap-type reporting in a transactional app.
> What defines over-normalization? And what are its
> consequences? (Other than the obvious degraded database
> performance and lots of tuning)
What kind of "problems" are folks talking about? 99 times out of ten ;-) it's developers who consider joins "weird".
> I hear rumblings that our ERP system is over-normalized.
Could be; I'm working on a planning app that is just about as normalized as I've ever seen in a database I didn't create ;-). The problem is, of course, that there are a lot of olap-type queries that are needed, and hence we have some of the squirreliest-looking code in our report engine. The OO guys don't care that much about it, as they have a pretty efficient relational-to-Object engine that does all the roll-up stuff for them.
So, what are the kinds of problems you are running into?
