On Sat, Jun 16, 2018 at 12:53 AM, Man-wai Chang <[email protected]> wrote:
> You are supposed to design the ER using the best normal form, at least
> according to school textbooks! :)
>

But you don't just design it once, you design the perfect logical
design, then you design a physical design that takes into
consideration real-world issues such as storage and performance. So,
logically, all fields might fit in one table, but realistically, you
might decide to store less-used or overly large data in a separate 1:1
table.

In this case, there's a 1:1 table that *COULD* be folded back into the
original. You have to evaluate the cost of migration: rewriting the
code, writing the migration, supporting customers with both schemas in
production out in the field, against the benefits. In a lot of cases,
a legacy design is best left as is. "Things are the way they are
because they got that way."

Usually the situation is the opposite: an attribute once included in
the table needs to be extracted for a 1:M relationship because the
client told you "There's NEVER more than a primary and alternate
contact" and that turns out not to be the case after a while, or the
business changes.

-- 
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com

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