Re: Data storage question

Jerry Gitomer wrote in message <7prv0f$iqq$1_at_autumn.news.rcn.net>...
>Hi,
>
> From a relational point of view you have a bad design. In
>essence you are storing an array in each row of the table. True,
>when using Oracle, it won't waste space, but what happens the day
>one item requires 11 attributes? (As improbable as that sounds
>to you today the probability of it happening is very close to 1!)

One of my favorite bug fixes in Oracle Manufacturing: The table in question had columns ATTRIBUTE1-ATTRIBUTE15 in one block, then some other columns, then another block of ATTRIBUTE16-ATTRIBUTE35, then yet more columns, then a block of ATTRIBUTE36-ATTRIBUTE72. Reading through the patch history comments found a bug fix for "Customer needs more than 15 fields", then a little while later, "Customer needs more than 35 fields". Once a bad implementation is done, it gets a lot harder to go back and do it right.

• Brad Whitlock