Re: maximum number of columns per table

From: Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 17:55:45 -0700
Message-ID: <1090544170.883414@yasure>

Tony wrote:

> 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.

My assumption as well.

Daniel Morgan Received on Thu Jul 22 2004 - 19:55:45 CDT