Re: DB design question: how to handle address change in online shopping database?

In article <uU3q4.2413$Oy1.36692_at_dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>,   "Rich \"oracle_man\" Headrick" <rich.headrick2_at_gte.net> wrote:
> Like Alans reply: Do you need the historical data? Only thing I
 could see
> it usefull for would be: Tax reporting for sales in that area, and
 some
> OLAP/Demographic type stuff(i.e. how many widgets sold to aliens west
 of the
> Mississippi).
>
> One idea to keeping the historical data would be to make the shipto
 address
> a "many-to-one" relation to the user table. Then add a boolian
 column which
> would indicate 1=current_address or 0=old_address.
>
> Good luch.
>
> Regards,
>
> oracle_man
>

oracle_man,

One requirement might be to resolve the kind of dispute where the customer says "But I never received it". At least you'd know where you sent the previous order, even if there had been another one to a different address since then.

Maybe I'm being cynical, but I've worked on a lot of systems that have that kind of requirement... ;)

Cheers,

     Tim

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Before you buy. Received on Wed Feb 16 2000 - 00:00:00 CET