Re: Database design question - Isolated, unrelated tables

From: paul c <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 22:35:53 GMT
Message-ID: <drXfi.62901$xq1.34539_at_pd7urf1no>

Erland Sommarskog wrote:

>  (nyathancha_at_hotmail.com) writes:
> 

>>I have a question regarding best practices in database design. In a
>>relational database, is it wise/necessary to sometimes create tables
>>that are not related to other tables through a foreign Key
>>relationship or does this always indicate some sort of underlying
>>design flaw. Something that requires a re evaluation of the problem
>>domain?
> ...
> In the end what matters a lot is how this data is going to be used. ...

Good point. (Also, WHETHER it is ever going to be used. Once or twice I've had the strongest feeling possible that such an "audit trail" requirement wasn't thought out and then saw its sponsors quickly retreat when it turned out to be not only inoperable, but unused! The "requirements" I remember were sort of an equivalent to an non-computerized system where somebody decides to hire one auditor for every employee, including the auditors.) Don't know much about temporal db, so I won't mention that possibility and i'll just shut up for now.

p Received on Tue Jun 26 2007 - 00:35:53 CEST