Re: Newbie question on database design

From: Jan.Hidders <hidders_at_hcoss.uia.ac.be>
Date: 25 Oct 2002 11:59:11 +0200
Message-ID: <3db915ef$1_at_news.uia.ac.be>


In article <apb3mq$4pf$1_at_usenet.otenet.gr>, George Sgouros <sgouros_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>Hello everybody
>
>In a recent normalization tutorial I've read
>(http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/barry20000731.php3?page=1)

Well, introducing identifiers is not part of normalization and considered bad practice by many. But I don't feel like a flame war today so I'll leave others to rant about that. :-)

>My question is, why not using a talbe to hold ALL of the above relations
>I was thinking of something like this:
>
>[...]
>
>Table: ALL_Relations
>Fields: RelationID, Related_URL_ID, Related_User_ID,
>Related_Company_ID
>
>Is this against good database design practice?

That depends on the cardinalities of the relationships. If a user has many URLs or can belong to more than one company then you are not in 4NF and still have redundancy.

  • Jan Hidders
Received on Fri Oct 25 2002 - 11:59:11 CEST

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