Re: What is this model technique called

Hi Kenneth,

> :) I have actually found it illuminating and helpful.

So did I! (But I am still hoping I haven't put off Mr Celko <g> - I like reading his book(s)/posts!).

>Some months ago the
> EAV thing took root in the mind of somebody who tried to hire me to
> implement it. He was convinced he had thought of it himself and that
> nobody else ever had.

It's amazing that this particular type of behaviour is rife. 2 years ago I came across such a model - naturally it did not have a name in the company. They all called it the RM model - after the consultant's name who did it for the company - his name? Roger Moore!!! <BG> I never even met him and he was a legend!!! "Oh, you mean the RM model?"

>The politics of the situation meant I could not
> simply dismiss it, I had to take it apart piece by piece with him.

<g> Yep, how consistent!!!

> Hmmmm, perhaps that is the dividing line we have been looking for,
> prototyping? A programmer can build in crude support for some attributes
> and feel his way through where they should go. Then when he is
> comfortable, he can commit them to being columns in a table. Some would
> say this smacks of bad practice, in that you are supposed to plan much
> better than that, but this humble developer finds proper designs are a lot
> easier to discover if you actually make up a lot of example designs and
> start watching how they behave, so I will happily defend "bad practice"
> during the prototyping stage.

That's what I meant earlier, actually. :) Designing for everything BEFORE going to Production is a pipe dream. You will always get a few odd attributes missing. Call it Bad Design, incompetence or an unfair life - it's irrelevant when you are sitting in a meeting and the client tells you to fix it!!! In such risky cases, it is almost always possible to gather tables who are "usual suspects" ie. you suspect that such and such table will require a few more attributes we are not sure of at design time. IMHO, that's a sensible thing to do.

Regards

Abdullah Received on Tue Jun 10 2003 - 10:29:47 CEST