Re: How to model searchable properties of an entity

Laconic2 wrote:
> data that describes parts is data.
True

> data that describes data is meta data.
True

> I'm not sure exactly what you mean by a template. I've used the term myself
> in home grown tools I've built to improve my productivity when the client's
> clock is running. But you may mean something completely different.
I do

> Mixing data about more than one attribute in a single column, and then
> using metadata stored in a nearby column to unscramble the first column has
> lots of downsides. There are downsides for revising and extending the
> application, downsides for performance, downsides for the learning curve
> of new people who have to use the data, etc.
Won't argue about that. Elegant is not a word I would use to describe this one.

> That doesn't mean your solution can't work. It does mean that these
> downsides need to be evaluated and mitigated before accepting your solution.
Yep.

I think Dilips main problem is trying to get an OO mindset translated to

   relational. Did we ever hear what kind of DB he's actually using?

I for one would be really interested in another way of doing this without having to define a load of tables or 1 table with a load of columns which will be mostly NULL by nature. Received on Tue Aug 17 2004 - 15:10:20 CEST