Howdy Folks, Just wondering what people's opinions are on the following topic: a) One table with copious fields -vs- b) Multiple tables with fewer fields each, linked somehow ex: a) One table with 30 fields containing all possible customer data (name, 2 addresses, 4 phone numbers, e-mail, payment method, etc) -vs- b) One table with names and IDs (2 or 3 fields), one table with addresses (11 fields), one table with contact info (6 fields), one table with payment data (4 or 5 fields).
Note that this is intentionally an example where there is no need for many-to-one mapping, with the exception of two addresses (billing and shipping) to one customer, so the many-to-one ease facilitated by option (b) isn't much of an incentive in this case. This is entirely academic, as I've already made my decision for the database in question.. I'm just curious what others think, especially if any opinions happen to address performance vs. storage space -type issues. Cheers, ~Brian ---------------- Brian A. Henning Strutmasters.com 866.597.2397 ---------------- -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
