Re: maximum number of columns per table

Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:<1090474636.848198_at_yasure>...
> Tony wrote:
> >>>That was a joke, I hope? You are not seriously advocating the
> >>>egregious generic attribute/value table that database "designers" with
> >>>about 6 months' experience are always so excited about? Please tell
> >>>me that was a joke!
> >>
> >>As serious as a heart attack.
> >
> >
> > Oh, OK... Queries on that are going to be fun...
>
> Hopefully you realize I was serious about the model versus 1000 columns
> but hardly the "egregious generic attribute/value table."

Good - I didn't really think you could be advocating that, but it looked rather like you were in response to the query about an 80-column table. I can imagine an entity with 80 proper, distinct attributes quite easily, and would not like to see those attributes all squashed into a singe VARCHAR2 column over 80 rows.

Now, with the 1000-column table it seems very likely we are dealing with columns like phone_no1, phone_no2, ... or budget_1991, budget_1992, ... and there the "think vertically" advice is spot on of course. Received on Thu Jul 22 2004 - 07:20:12 CDT