Re: Curious about wide tables.

Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> In another thread, the O.P. had a question about a large table with over 100
> columns. Is this usual? Whenever I make a database, which is not often, it
> ends up with tables that rarely have over to columns, and usually less than
> that. When normalized, my tables rarely get very wide.
>
> Without criticising the O.P., since I know nothing about his application, I
> am curious how it comes about that such a wide table is justified.
>

Depends on the application.

Something like drivers license db will have a few things like name,
address, type, dob, restrictions and end date

Then something like an insurance policy where each record needs to know
who it is for, the item(car - rego make model... house - address suburb
state), effective date, end date, date of inception, type of cover,
value of cover, excess amount, base premium, agent fees, gov fees, total
premium, invoice sent, who entered it and when......

Sometimes you can have a lot of data that makes up one instance.

--

Shane Ambler
pgSQL (at) Sheeky (dot) Biz

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