RE: Single Code Table or Separate Code tables dilemma

Preface: I am a developer!

If the DBA wants to have 10000 tables, no skin off my nose. A generic maintenance form and LOV form for a set of tables all with the same format is not that huge a task.

The best developer argument AGAINST a centralized code table is that eventually someone will request an enhancement that adds functionality to one of the codes beyond a simple code/description table. This means the codes have to be pulled out of the central code table and created as a new table with the 3 flags and 5 coded fields to support the new functionality. The DBA work on that is easy, but then the developers go hunting in all the existing program code that hits the code table (haystack) to find all the places where that program code is actually using the code in question
(needle).

If I were starting a product from scratch and there was a central code table I would probably code against a set of views in anticipation of the above event, so the DBA ends up creating 10000 objects anyway.

On the other hand:
1. Everywhere I have worked, there has been a central code table of some sort.
2. In all cases that code table was put in place by the DBAs, not the developers, because they didn't want all those tables and were not really hung up on referential integrity that the application was enforcing anyway.

Brian Norrell
Manager, MPI Development
QuadraMed
511 E John Carpenter Frwy, Su 500
Irving, TX 75062
(972) 831-6600

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Author: Norrell, Brian
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