Re: A Question on Integrety
Date: 14 Dec 2003 14:04:52 -0800
Message-ID: <a264e7ea.0312141404.3a4b5947_at_posting.google.com>
>> How do I design a database for entities that are subject to
different business rules throughout their lifecycle!? I could easily
set up the relational integrity for any one "stage", but this would
not be applicable at all times. <<
I just sent in a three part article to DBAzine.com on this topic. My recommendation was a series of "staging tables" which start off with the absolute nightmare of making all the columns VARCHAR(<max>) or NVARCHAR(<max>) and then move them in steps to other staging tables with more and more constraints and proper datatypes as I scrub the crap into some kind of usable shape.
Ideally, you'd like ETL tool that goes from raw files to the actual schema in one leap, but the intermediate "staging tables" let you "rollback" to the previous data quality level if you need to look at something -- a scrubbing audit trail. Received on Sun Dec 14 2003 - 23:04:52 CET