A question of DB Design.

Hi!

I am designing a personal contacts management system using an Oracle 7.3 DB server, Lotus Domino Go Pro Webserver and CGI along with Netscape.

I have done some things right already but am starting over. A couple of issues have come up.

First off I am assuming each person will have one address, though it is possible for two people to have identical addresses (e.g. the person and their spouse who may or may not end up as a separate entry in my persons table). The question I have is would it be best to have a separate table for addresses and reference the persons table or should I just lump address information into the persons table?

Second the issue of a spouse. Now if two of my friends are married then each would have a separate entry in the persons table. Now I am thinking that if the spouse is also a friend then I would like to refer back to the spouses entry. Essentially I would have a foreign key referencing a field in the table itself. Of course I could just put a name in their and be done with it. Now would I gain anything by referencing the spouse in the table itself?

table

name	spouse		Link	key
AB	CD		CD1	AB1
CD	AB		AB1	CD1

Link would be a foreign key that references the key field of the same table.

Would a circular situation illustrated above cause problems?

Thanks

From: Mark A. Framness
http://netnet.net/~farmer/
mframness_at_lakefield.net

Go Pack Go!
Oh balsam tree oh balsam tree I see you when I deer hunt! Brian Framness Received on Tue Dec 21 1999 - 21:14:53 CST