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"Ramon F Herrera" <ramon_at_conexus.net> wrote in message
news:c9bc36ff.0404281128.1d9703d2_at_posting.google.com...
> "Niall Litchfield" <n-litchfield_at_audit-commission.gov.uk> wrote in message
news:<408f8198$0$20514$ed9e5944_at_reading.news.pipex.net>...
>
> >
> > Obviously you might actually have tables for STATE and DISTRICT if
necessary
> > as well.
> >
>
> You have hit the nail right on the head, Niall. What if I don't know
> in advance whether there are districts or not? We happen to have
> about 2000 client companies and I don't want to write 2000 programs.
>
> The names "DISTRICT" or "STATE" should not be hardwired into a
> table name, they are just soft labels that can be present in
> one company and absent in the next.
Well that was I went with store and location - states and districts don't mean anything to me as I live outside the US. I still would argue that creating a logical model first is the way to go. what are the things that you are reporting on, what properties do they have? what is their relationship to one another?
There is of course an alternative if you don't consider traditional ER modelling and design appropriate in your case. Don't use an RDBMS at all. Use some sort of XML and get the data to describe itself.:(
-- Niall Litchfield Oracle DBA http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.comReceived on Wed Apr 28 2004 - 14:55:17 CDT
> Consider also the case when
> one company takes over another (we had Cendant, the owner of AVIS
> taking over Budget, and soon we will have Bank of America merge
> with Fleet Bank), that's the kind of flexibility I'd like to have.
> A user could just drag a tree into another and bang! the 2 companies
> have just merged.
>
> -Ramon