Path: news.easynews.com!core-easynews!newsfeed2.easynews.com!easynews.com!easynews!newsfeed.news2me.com!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!proxad.net!news.telebyte.nl!teleglobe.net!ctb-nntp1.saix.net!not-for-mail From: Billy Verreynne Newsgroups: comp.databases.oracle.misc Subject: Re: help with Object Model, relation daabase model, - some theory Followup-To: comp.databases.oracle.misc Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 07:42:23 +0000 Organization: Verreynne Software Labs Lines: 28 Message-ID: References: <7vovdvo04b3j60hdi6kons1u56qduurnm9@4ax.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.54.202.208 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: ctb-nnrp2.saix.net 1054878255 12694 198.54.202.208 (6 Jun 2003 05:44:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@saix.net NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Jun 2003 05:44:15 GMT User-Agent: KNode/0.7.1 Xref: core-easynews comp.databases.oracle.misc:98434 X-Received-Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 22:48:47 MST (news.easynews.com) [crossposting groups removed] Don wrote: > I'm trying to properly model a supply chain process and would like > some help. I'll warn you that this post is fairly long and is mainly > theoretical discussion. I would select Door Number 2. Reason. The quantities are _attributes_ of the entity Inventory. Straight forward and that simple. Relational DB Design 101. Ignore the fact that these attributes contain values of the same unit. That does not determine the nature of the design. If these attributes were weight, price and colour, how would you have normalised and designed the relation? Separate tables? Or a single table. Also - on the physical design side. Single i/o to read entity with all its attributes. As oppose to multiple i/o's to assemble the attributes of the entity. In fact, I would say that any other approach _will_ have a significant and unnecessary impact on performance and space required for tables & indexes. -- Billy