Help, newbie question on data structure and atomicity

From: Chi <webjunk4me_at_hotmail.com>
Date: 14 Feb 2002 06:41:06 -0800
Message-ID: <25d4a987.0202140641.313ceb82@posting.google.com>

Hi,

I have a table that must facilitate English and French salutations such as Mr, Mrs, Monsieur, Madame, etc. I have two methods in which I can do this:

method 1:

SALUTATION

---

SALUTATION_ID (PK)
SALUTATION_ENGLISH
SALUTATION_FRENCH

===================

Method 2:

SALUTATION

---

SALUTATION_ID (PK)
SALUTATION
LANGUAGE (FK) In this case I would have a separate table named "LANGUAGE" that would look like:

LANGUAGE

---

LANGUAGE_ID (PK)
LANGUAGE What I am wondering is which way is better to go and why? (please make reference to normalization if necessary, I wanna learn this!). Note that I need the Language table for something else so it's not just ceated for this.

Also, I have read a little on atomic data (breaking data down to it's simplest form) and don't understand how far to go. Example, a standard North American phone number is made up of NNN-NNN-NNNN. Should I create one field to hold the entire number or 3 separate fields to hold the 3 parts? Why would I do one or the other?

Thanks for any help with this,
Terri Received on Thu Feb 14 2002 - 08:41:06 CST