Re: Managing tables with >800 fields

Tom Lewis wrote:

> I have an operational data store with 10 million records in an account
> table and 500 million records in a transactional table. The account
> table is >800 fields wide but only c30 of these are frequenetly used.
>
> Is it worthwhile to split the 800 field table into one of 35 fields
> and one of 765 fields and if so, what is the most effective way to
> join they back together?
>
> Tom

I can, without fear of contradiction, say that there is no normalized table on this planet with 800 fields. That is just a literal impossibility.

Learn how to normalize a database and make that your first priority. What you have here is a nightmare.

Split into two tables? Absolutely not. I'd be thinking in terms of splitting into a minimum of 100 tables to even come close to normalizing the data unless your fields names are stuff like ADDRESS1, ADDRESS2, ADDRESS3, ADDRESS# .... If that is the case you need to learn to think vertically ... not horizontally. So you end up with a three field table such as ADDRESSNUM (values 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) and ADDRESS_VALUE (the actual address), and a primary key.

Daniel A. Morgan Received on Wed Jun 06 2001 - 01:07:26 CDT