Modelling problem

Hi list

The problem is about how to deal with look up tables and domain codes.

Aproach a)

Have one big table containing all possible domain types (like gender,

account type, organizational unit etc.) and one even bigger table containing

all the possible values for those domain types. The tables that use these

types actually reference the value they should contain.

Aproach b)

Have "standard" look up tables for everything, for example have a table like

organizational unit, which will be referenced by tables like employee via

foreign key to link to the unit the emp. actually works for at this moment.

I feel more comfortable about aproach b. Now people might say "Why ?" and I

might say "Normalization ?!" and they might say "What's that good for if

aproach is much easier to implement and blahblah....".

Any ideas regarding pros and cons for both aproaches ?

Regards and TIA,

Stefan Received on Wed Jul 17 2002 - 10:15:59 CDT