Re: Normalization, Natural Keys, Surrogate Keys

"Tobin Harris" <comedyharris_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:ac51fd$mk6ki$1_at_ID-135366.news.dfncis.de...
> > (btw, you should use singular rather than plural for table names.
> > <g>)
>
> He he. This cropped up recently on comp.databases, where Joe Celko
was
> saying the opposite! I quite like singular table names, but he was
saying
> that collective nouns (e.g Personelle) were favourable, and failing
that
> plural nouns (Employees). Apparently this is part of the ISO (?)
standard.
> The argument seemed to be that if the table is to hold more than one
> Employee, then it should be called Employees.
>
> I still prefer singular <g>. What's funny, and a little annoying
IMHO, is
> that noone can agree on *anything*! There always seems to be more
than one
> 'correct' way of doing something, and strong but different arguments
for
> each. That's probably why standards are good - let someone else
decide for
> us!

The reason I like singular is that when you do data model validation on the cardinality, you speak of an instance/row, not of multiple rows. This is why I wouldn't agree with people who say to use plural:

[order] -----> [order_detail]

   (0,N) (1,1)

"An ORDER may or may not have an ORDER_DETAIL"

"An ORDER_DETAIL must have at least one and at most one ORDER" Received on Sat May 18 2002 - 07:50:38 CDT