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[nycphp-talk] data modelling vs. db design (was: ER Diagram tool for MySQL/OS X)

Allen Shaw ashaw at iifwp.org
Tue Oct 4 11:53:46 EDT 2005


Stephen Musgrave wrote:

>This is an interesting topic because I'm approaching a question based 
>upon this principal.  There is an application that I am building where 
>the User record can have 5 addresses (home address, work address, 
>permanent address, international address, etc, etc).  I'm considering 
>making a table called UserAddress and then linking it to address ID 
>fields in the User table.  I'm on the fence about it because while I 
>don't want a monstrous User table with tons of columns, I also don't 
>want to over normalize.
>  
>
Here's a great working example to explore the issue.  I would let the 
User table contain no address info, and then let the UserAddress table 
contain one address per row with an extra column for UserID.  This seems 
like a clear one-to-many relationship between a person and his/her many 
addresses (also assuming it could be any number between 0 and 5, 
right?), so adding 5 sets of columns to the User table doesn't seem 
right...  

Honestly, the only reason I'm writing here is so someone can correct me 
if I'm wrong (and if I'm right then this might actually helping somebody 
-- neat-o ...).

-- 
Allen Shaw
Polymer (http://polymerdb.org)




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