Re: Number or character?
Date: 4 Nov 1993 23:16:46 -0500
Message-ID: <2bck3e$kfh_at_access.digex.net>
[Question about employee table and having a STATE table with the employee
STATE field being a foreign key, and what data type to make the foreign key]
This is a classic example of too much of a good thing. Normalization
is fine up to a point, but this is carrying it too far. There is a
reasonable efficient natural coding: the two-character postal state code
(NV, TX, etc.). If you really need to have 'Nevada', 'Texas', etc, then
go ahead and have a state table keyed by this code. Trying to shrink
this to a one-byte code is carrying things too far. Are you that hard up
for disk space? Even a million employees would only add one meg of storage
going with two bytes rather than one. Remember, *people* have to use
your data; how do you expect them to know what state code '7' means?
-- Mike Stein The above represents the Absolute Truth. POB 10420 Therefore it cannot possibly be the official Arlington, VA 22210 position of my employer.Received on Fri Nov 05 1993 - 05:16:46 CET