Hi All,
I hope someone out there can resolve a debate I am having with my boss.
The debate started when we were discussing the Pick (Universe) database
which we are running our legacy application on (and thankfully moving
away from). As some of you may know, the Pick/Universe database supports
"multi-values" in fields. In other words the database is not in first
normal form. During the discussion I stated that a Sybase or Oracle
database would never be designed using multi-values. I worked briefly
with a Sybase database in my previous job and as far as I could tell
this could not be done. My boss claims that you might want to use
multi-values in a relational database to de-normalize and improve
performance. I am new to this job and was really shocked when I first
saw "multi-values" in a so called "relational" Pick/Universe database.
In school I was trained on the merits of relational databases and how to
de-nornmalize to improve performance, but I thought all relational
databases were at least in first normal form. Is a Pick/Universe
database really relational? Can Sybase and Oracle databases be designed
using multivalues? I appreciate any comments concerning this.
Thanks
Dan
Received on Wed Nov 13 1996 - 00:00:00 CET
