Eric Peterson wrote: > Hi, > > I'm trying to convince certain people in our company that we need to > normalize some (maybe all) of our database to 1NF. I'm trying to avoid > situations where we need to make database schema and code updates to > add a 2nd phone number to a user in the system as an example. > If there was a 'user' table, you'd add a duplicate record with just the phone number field different? Sounds messy. > They want evidence that such a database is better and that's it's not > too complicated to understand. > > It's better because it's less work to maintain and less work to make sure some data you're updating/removing doesn't get outdated. It's not more complicated conceptually for 1NF, just can be more tables to work with. > Does anyone have any resources or projects (oss) that I can present to > help convince them? Almost anything that uses a traditional database - as I work with the database every day, I can say the Moodle course management system fits 1NF > Also looking for some examples or documentation > that would help us design our system and avoid some common problems? > Get a book (or find some articles) on database design - the common problems are well documented and can be derived from understanding the normal forms. > Thanks, > Eric > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >