Re: Named Mistakes and Questionable Practices

From: David Fetter <david_at_fetter.org>
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:01:47 -0500
Message-ID: <T4qdna4yGobWeRDZnZ2dnUVZ_tOdnZ2d@speakeasy.net>

-CELKO- <jcelko212_at_earthlink.net> wrote:

>>> Has anybody here made a list of canonical mistakes that DB practitioners make? <<

>
> Not really, but we do have a few:
>
> 1) EAV = Entity-attribute-vaue
> 2) OTLT = One True Lookup Table aka MUCK (Massively Unified Code Keys)

I thought these were the same. Love the acronym (retronym? :)

> 3) Integrity in the Apps

Heh.

> 4) Denormalized tables

Um, maybe I'm just an idiot, but sometimes, I'll materialize a view which turns out to be a denormalized table especially when the view does something heavy and doesn't have to be all that fresh. Do you mean storing the "true" information in some denormalized form, or denormalizing under all circumstances?

> 5) Auto-increment methods for keys

Do you mean "clever" ways to autogenerate keys, or using autogenerated keys at all, or...?

> 6) No keys at all

I can't say I've seen this recently. "Keys" that make no sense, yes, but not (except in spreadsheets) a complete absence.

Cheers,
D

-- 
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778        AIM: dfetter666
                              Skype: davidfetter

We're seeing companies that are pleasantly surprised to find out how
much more flexible dealing with PostgreSQL is from a licensing
standpoint than certain other 'free as in herpes' databases.
                                                        Jim C. Nasby

Received on Mon Jun 12 2006 - 17:01:47 CDT