Modelling problem

From: Stefan Jahnke <Stefan.Jahnke_at_bov.de>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 09:16:03 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.00499550.20020716091603@fatcity.com>

Hi list

I'm predicting a more philosophical discussion about how to model stuff arising at work. So I thought it might be a good idea to gather some pros and cons beforehand (Always good to have some ammunition;).

The problem is about how to deal with look up tables and domain codes. Aproach a)

Have one big table containing all possible domain types (like gender, account type, organizational unit etc.) and one even bigger table containing all the possible values for those domain types. The tables that use these types actually reference the value they should contain.

Aproach b)

Have "standard" look up tables for everything, for example have a table like organizational unit, which will be referenced by tables like employee via foreign key to link to the unit the emp. actually works for at this moment.

I feel more comfortable about aproach b. Now people might say "Why ?" and I might say "Normalization ?!" and they might say "What's that good for if aproach is much easier to implement and blahblah....".

Any ideas regarding pros and cons for both aproaches ?

Regards and TIA,
Stefan  

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Author: Stefan Jahnke
  INET: Stefan.Jahnke_at_bov.de

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