Question: Best Practice & Generic Code Tables
Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2001 17:12:22 GMT
Message-ID: <9618dc$7pj$1_at_nnrp1.deja.com>
This is a very basic question, but a deja power search didn't yield many answers.
What are best practices regarding use of "generic code tables"--i.e. a table used for displaying code values with a layout such as this:
code category (k)
code (k)
display_name
sort order
(We called our Enumerated Options. I don't know if there are standard names for such tables).
In our current application, we use these generic code table often. A table might have a "STATUS_ENUM" field which means (to the programmer) that it's a code field of category "STATUS".
The generic code table allowed us to have one table (and maintenance program) instead of fifty.
We never, however, set up the foreign-key constraints to enforce the relationships. We maintained them in the programs.
here are my questions:
1) what are standard and best practices regarding such generic code
tables?
2) if you do set up in your data model (e.g. Erwin) constraints for
each reference to generic code table, how do you keep your model "clean
looking"?
thanks,
bill milbratz
chicago il usa
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Received on Fri Feb 09 2001 - 18:12:22 CET