Re: Charades [Was: RE: Define "flatten database" ?]

From: Paul <paul_at_test.com>
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:30:01 +0000
Message-ID: <41ffae89$0$73821$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net>

DA Morgan wrote:

>> Ultimately there's no right or wrong way to model business data

>
> There may well be more than one "right" one but there are certainly
> a large number of models that are dead wrong. Anyone that has been
> in this business for awhile has seen that a very many times.

Well it depends what you mean by "wrong" I guess :)

I could store my business data and rules written in longhand in a large notebook in chronological order of when I thought of it.

That's not wrong in the sense that it would give me false information, it's just not very useful for querying and reporting.

You could have business rules enforced in the client applications rather than centrally in the DBMS.

That's not wrong in the sense that they won't be enforced, it's just a logistical nightmare making sure all the client apps are synchronised.

If, however, I stored all my business rules as the number "7", that would be absolutely wrong, because I can't distinguish between them.

So when people slag off XML or multi-valued databases, they aren't saying they are Wrong in some absolute sense, just that the practical ramifications of such a model can be less than desirable in some ways.

Paul. Received on Tue Feb 01 2005 - 10:30:01 CST