Re: Table Design for 2 similar table

From: Mark D Powell <Mark.Powell_at_eds.com>
Date: 17 Dec 2002 06:31:13 -0800
Message-ID: <2687bb95.0212170631.2416111@posting.google.com>

"Ginger Mall" <bocgco_at_hongkong.com> wrote in message news:<3dfeb2c9_at_shknews01>...
> I am facing a question on schema design.
>
> There is 2 types of records. The 1st is start record of some activities
> while the other is the stop record.
> They contains actually different attributes except "UserID" and "DateTime".
> The query will only extract the result by UserID and sort by DateTime.
>
> e.g.
> .. User111 Start .......
> .. User111 Stop .......
> .. User111 Start .......
> .. User111 Stop.......
> .. User111 Start .......
> .. User111 Start .......
> .. User111 Start .......
> .. User111 Stop .......
> .. User111 Start .......
>
>
> My problem is should I split these records into 2 diff. table ?

For what purpose? The proper answer in relation to design usually depends on understanding the 'natural' relationship between entities and the purposes to which data is going to be put.

We have a table with similar layout that is used to track jobs. By selecting the data for a jobname in descending date/time order it is very easy to see jobs that have started but not finished or terminated by error.

IMHO -- Mark D Powell -- Received on Tue Dec 17 2002 - 08:31:13 CST