posted on Thursday, December 23, 2004 5:54 AM
by
joeolsen
Xref Anyone?
Yesterday I received an update on a project I am somewhat involved with including the standard Visio diagram with a purposed database layout from one of the developers on the project. After a quick glance there were some glaring revisions that needed to be made in order for the document to be an accurate representation of what the schema should look like. On of the suggestions I made was to use Xref tables between entities like Person > Address, Person > PhoneNumber, etc.. I explained to him the advantage of using an Xref table with a type field and how it would solve the problem of one person having many addresses, while minimizing the duplication of data in the address field. To my surprise, the developer had never heard of Xref tables or any of the other suggestions I made. A couple of the other main suggestions I made were:
- Use a standard nomenclature for tables,pks, and fks ie. Person(Table), Person_ID(PK), PersonID(FK)
- Use a guid for the identifier in certain tables for added security
Having said all of that, I started to wonder whether what I was explaining to him was standard or simply preference, or maybe a little bit of both. I was shocked to hear that he knew nothing of Xref tables, he had not even heard the name before. Is this no longer part of development education. Is the education market so corporate that we talk more about tools than theory and practical application now?
Anyway, I would be interested in hearing from you're thoughts on these issues. What are some of your practices in regards to the above mentioned suggestions?