Re: Help! I can't support normalization

phantomtoe_at_yahoo.com (Rowan) wrote in news:4bbf8d70.0211010748.727d38ef_at_posting.google.com:

> Greetings all,
>
> I have read with great interest the discussions regarding
> normalization. I understand it. I can do it. Unfortunately, I
> cannot convince the people I work with how important it is. I am a
> newbie and don't know how to support my argument that our database
> must be normalized. When I began at this company three months ago
> soon after graduation I found that the sql server 2000 database was
> completely corrupt. Primary keys were not declared, (let alone
> foreign keys), fields appeared multiple times throughout tables with
> different names, etc. Pretty much every bad thing you could think of
> existed in this database. Reports are very difficult to create. I
> have since redesigned and built a new database and am now in the
> process of reworking the vb application to fit the new database,
> including edi remapping. My problem is that being a newbie, I
> sometimes need to ask for vb help from the other programmer. An
> example is yesterday I was struggling with an aspect of concatenating
> an employee Last Name and a First Name. I displayed a list of
> concatenated names in a datacombo but wanted to store the Employeeid
> in a customer table. When I asked the programmer for help, he said
> just concatenate the names in the field in the employee table and call
> it "name". I said no. He asked why. I didn't have an answer. Could
> anyone give me an answer? I would like a well supported argument to
> put this silliness to rest. I appreciate anyone's thoughts and ideas.
> Please enlighten me!

Apart from what others have said considering using the first and last name separately, you can also take a look at marriages or other name changes. Most time, only the last name changes. Do you really want to risk accidently changing the first name, too?

Heinz Received on Mon Nov 04 2002 - 09:01:08 CET