Help! Newbiw question

From: T <t_at_t.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 00:36:15 GMT
Message-ID: <3C6B076A.C51AB657_at_t.com>

I have a table that must facilitate English and French salutations such as Mr, Mrs, Monsieur, Madame, etc. I have two methods in which I can do this:

method 1:

SALUTATION

---

SALUTATION_ID (PK)
SALUTATION_ENGLISH
SALUTATION_FRENCH

===================

Method 2:

SALUTATION

---

SALUTATION_ID (PK)
SALUTATION
SALUTATION_LANGUAGE (FK) In this case I would have a separate table named "LANGUAGE" that would look like:

LANGUAGE

---

LANGUAGE_ID (PK)
LANGUAGE And then link the "LANGUAGE" field to the "SALUTATION_LANGUAGE" field.

What I am wondering is which way is better to go and why? (please make reference to normalization if necessary, I wanna learn this!). Note that I need the Language table for something else so it's not just ceated for this.

Also, I have read a little on atomic data (breaking data down to it's simplest form) and don't understand how far to go. Example, a standard North American phone number is made up of NNN-NNN-NNNN. Should I create one field to hold the entire number or 3 separate fields to hold the 3 parts? Why would I do one or the other?

Thanks for any help with this,
Terri Received on Thu Feb 14 2002 - 01:36:15 CET