Re: [OT] "advanced" database design (long)

On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 10:49:51AM +0100, Masse Jacques wrote:
> Hello

[much garbage including HTML trimmed.]

Please set your mail client to text-only. HTML does not make your
point better, and it annoys the heck out of people whose mail readers
use text.

> This model is known as Entity-Value-Attribute and not well
> appreciated by relational designers. I think it is not relational,
> but I use it as storage for data (in some case, I don't know the
> database structure -relational- where data will be stored). It's
> like a truck container used for office removal :).

It's more like sitting on a land mine and hoping it won't go off.

> Imho, don't use it with a complex database structure; as a minimum,
> use lookup tables for Value (to avoid uncontrolled new parameters)
> and add a column to store the attribute type.

Putting lipstick on the EAV pig does not help.

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david(dot)fetter(at)gmail(dot)com

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