Marshall wrote:
> On Mar 16, 9:03 am, "Roy Hann" <specia..._at_processed.almost.meat>
> wrote:
>
>>"Marshall" <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote in message
>>
>>news:1174060127.110635.173510_at_e65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>
>>>On Mar 16, 6:38 am, "Cimode" <cim..._at_hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>So, just considering a very simple version of an address:
>>
>>>addr1
>>>addr2
>>>city
>>>state/province
>>>postal code
>>
>>I think you already blew it. There might be an argument for isolating the
>>postal code, but it is a very rare business problem that requires one to
>>think about the address as N distinct dimensions. In fact, I would suggest
>>that you have violated 1NF since almost none of those "dimensions" is
>>meaningful except in the company of the others. You have invited us to
>>discern spurious internal structure in what should be an atom.
>
>
> Hmm, well, you didn't address the issue I was talking about.
>
> And I think I pretty well disagree with every sentence above:
>
>
>>I think you already blew it.
>
>
> Did not. :-)
>
>
>>There might be an argument for isolating the
>>postal code, but it is a very rare business problem that requires one to
>>think about the address as N distinct dimensions.
>
>
> I can think of plenty of them. Laws vary from locale to locale, and
> writing code for that often requires dividing things up by state or
> some other level. Or consider even a very simple application:
> printing a label. That needs to know which fields are which. Sure
> you could parse it every time but that's error prone and more
> complicated than different fields.
>
>
>
>>In fact, I would suggest
>>that you have violated 1NF since almost none of those "dimensions" is
>>meaningful except in the company of the others.
>
>
> In a simple many-to-many table with two foreign keys, the same
> argument applies.
>
>
>
>>You have invited us to
>>discern spurious internal structure in what should be an atom.
>
>
> The structure is very real. Cities and States are unquestionably
> real-world constructs, as are streets. I have modeled those
> things in a very uncontroversial way; Aunt Mildred will have
> no trouble explaining to you what those fields each mean.
>
> And what's your alternative? A string? That means pretty
> much every time you actually use an address you're going
> to have to try some error-prone technique to parse it.
I suspect he alluded to using an Address data type with various possible
representations.
Received on Fri Mar 16 2007 - 14:31:40 CDT
