Posted by Bruno Barros on 10/01/07 09:16

On 30 Sep, 19:09, "bob.chat...@gmail.com" <bob.chat...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Sep 30, 5:45 am, "Sanders Kaufman" <bu...@kaufman.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > "Jerry Stuckle" <jstuck...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
>
> >news:WeCdneLtDcJVNmPbnZ2dnUVZ_q_inZ2d@comcast.com...
>
> > > Sanders Kaufman wrote:
> > >> I'm woring on a similar situation.
> > >> I've got a userid, username, emailaddress and password.
>
> > >> But I also want fields for login_cookie, last_login, and parent_user.
> > >> I don't really WANT to create whole nother table to track that stuff, but
> > >> good design dictates that I should.
>
> > > And what "good design" is that? Definitely not normalization.
>
> > Definitely normalization.
>
> > >> The question becomes - if I break atomicity for expedience's sake, what
> > >> will be the consequences?
>
> > > --
> > > ==================
> > > Remove the "x" from my email address
> > > Jerry Stuckle
> > > JDS Computer Training Corp.
> > > jstuck...@attglobal.net
> > > ==================
>
> Has anyone got any benchmarks or profiling data to back up their
> claims? i have never noticed any performance increases based on
> setting up a database to be set up in the, for lack of a better label,
> "Everything belonging to the user in the user table" form versus the
> "Spread it out and call it normalized" form. There is of course merit
> to both options, but i think that it would be better to stop
> speculating and start supporting the information.
>
> I am working on a paper on this stuff so if i try to back something up
> with "Sanders Kaufman" or "Bruno Barros" said it wont come across very
> well.

I never said there would be performance differences, nor I named it
normalization. I named it keep the essential table a MUST for ALL
applications using the framework and then, according to the
applications' needs, use another table with the data needed. Not all
applications need the same amount of information! For example, a
customer needs to give away his phone number to be contacted, but a
guy registering for a forum doesn't have to! And then, instead having
a big fat table with a load of fields that might or might not be used
for the applications, you only had what was really necessary!

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