Re: Notes fields

I'd concur. As a developer (not DBA), this is a common structural form for notes storage, and allows maximum flexibility for future work.

The only thing from your original description that I find unusual is the numeric indicator on the "parent" table to indicate the presence or absence of a note(s) for the table entry. We would resolve that in the application layer that sits above the DB. I guess there are some advantages to knowing this "upstream" from the Notes table access, although I wouldn't call it optimal DB structure.

Gary

"Malcolm Dew-Jones" <yf110_at_vtn1.victoria.tc.ca> wrote in message news:426578df_at_news.victoria.tc.ca...
> Ed Prochak (ed.prochak_at_magicinterface.com) wrote:
> : what does your lack of disc space have to do with this NOTES table?
> : (I suspect nothing).
>
> : If looking to Normalize the tables (you could creat views of the
> : denormalized ones later, if you are careful), then you might save some
> : space.
>
> I don't see how the notes are not normal.
>
> They aren't really attributes of the tables, and each row of a table may
> or may not have any notes associated with it. Some tables might have more
> than one note per row (perhaps not today, but as a likely enhancement in
> the future, or already "under the table" by having multiple entries in
> each single item of free form text). Each note could have many attributes
> associated with it such as the date/format/language/editor/revision of the
> text (again, perhaps not today but as likely mods later). Furthermore,
> all the notes will share these common attributes. So why would you say
> it's not normal to have the notes in their own table?
>
> As for disk space, perhaps the thinking was that you might wish to be able
> to handle the free form text in a different area of the database,
> seperately from the rest of the data which probably has more fixed
> predictable requirements.
>
> $0.04
>
> --
>
> This space not for rent.
Received on Tue Apr 19 2005 - 17:38:06 CDT